FIRST CLASS

 TRAVELING WELL DRESSED

I set my alarm for 3:38am. It was unintentional. I like precision but last night I was too tired to spin the dial on my iPhone to 3:40 or push it back to 3:35, either choice a bit more reflective of my overly regimented personality. When my trumpeting ring tone went off I was in the middle of what I remember was a dream having something to do with being scolded as a child over dirty underwear and the embarrassment of being found with soiled fruit-of-the-looms in a multi car crash. It was a dream I was willing to rouse out of. I had showered the night before, packed what little I needed to return to the city and laid out my clothes knowing I'd only left myself twenty-two minutes to spritz some deodorant, brush my teeth and dress before leaving for the airport at precisely for o'clock. My flight was at six. My daughter had volunteered to get up and drive me to the Dane County Airport about a twenty-minute drive from the house. 

Traffic was light. I counted three other cars on the road all the way up to the turnoff onto the road leading to the airport. Construction was in full swing at the airport forcing us to drive into the parking lot where Emmy dropped me off. As sweet as she is the showing of affection is not something she is particularly comfortable with especially with her parents. She allowed me to give her a little peck on the check before I grabbed my satchel and computer bag and headed into the terminal.

The heat wave of the day before had broken, but apparently some travelers hadn't heard the weather report. I'm very old school when it comes to the appropriate dress code for airplane travel. Looking at the other travelers dressed mostly in shirts and wrinkled t-shirts making their way through the parking lot and into the check-in area I realized the dress code was clearly of my own concoction. Men in sleeveless t-shirts and girls in Daisy Dukes are not people I want to share an aisle with. My travel attire of loafers with socks (I can't believe people are willing to doff their shoes and expose their bare feet to airport carpeting rubbed by thousands of previous athlete footed passengers), jeans with creases, a pressed white shirt (actually it was perma-pressed), a Ralph Lauren vest and a linen sports coat knowing how cold they sometimes keep the inside of the cabin was the casual but confident look I was going for. A big plus of this look is that it can be a little intimidating to other travelers. On Southwest where there are no assigned seats even if there is only one unclaimed seat on the entire flight it is usually the seat next to me. It also helps that I take an aisle seat requiring anyone who wants a seat in my aisle to have to crawl over me to get there. 

This flight wasn't on Southwest but on Delta. My family hates my loyalty to Southwest and disdain for Delta but now that Southwest has given up all its direct flights to New York I've given up my A-List status with Southwest and become a lowly Delta flyer. I was now flying in an assigned seat with absolutely no power to object to a hairy arm sweating on our adjoining armrest. 

Before the flight I found a vacant leather club chair to sit in against the wall opposite my gate. It was now about fifteen minutes before our flight was about to begin the boarding process when over the airport intercom came "Can Leroy Melahn please come to the La Guardia flight check-in desk". Okay, so now you all know my given first name. As a teenager I had thought of doing what many do who don't like their given names. I thought I might try to go with the initials of my first and middle names that would be LC, but when you say LC Melahn it upped the anti on my getting gender bullied.  I feared people would confuse me with my aunt Elsie and as a teenager I had enough trouble with gender identity to give others the opportunity to push the point. Lee seemed the easiest way out. There wasn't much I could do with my last name, a name that is constantly butchered. So my first reaction to hearing my name over the intercom was a curious sense of mild shock. The person making the announcement didn't try to put an "A" between the h and n in Melahn. Nor did they come out with a chiding "Melonhead" the way my siblings and I have had to endure for most of our lives, but instead gave a correct pronunciation. It came out as "Milan" like the city in Italy. I was startled but then concerned. Had I left something at security, had there been a problem with my ticket? Then I remembered how they had pronounced my name correctly so maybe someone I knew was playing some sort of airport trick on me. That was quickly followed by the concern that something had happened at home and they were going to tell me some awful news. I gathered all my stuff and went up to the counter.

After I introduced myself the man behind the counter did a once over and then said,"Mr. Melahn would you like to be upgraded to first class?" 

"What?" Startled the unspoken subtext was this was a ruse to get me to pay for an upgrade I didn't purchase at the beginning.

"Can we upgrade you to first class?"

"Sure"

And with that he reprinted my ticket with no further explanation. It was a pretty full flight but there were some empty seats. I sat in my single seat aisle without having to worry about a traveling mate. I was served a drink before take off. My bags were taken and stowed for me.  It might have been random, it might have been luck or it might have been divine intervention. I don't know, but remember my tip about dressing the part. I have no proof, but putting on a clean shirt just might push you to the front of the line and you too could get moved into first class.

A GIFT FROM THE HEART

 WHEN GIVING MEANS THE MOST

Our most recent trip to Italy was the granting of a birthday boy's wish. It was planned well in advance during a difficult time of uncertainty. Who plans on a pandemic or organizing a trip during one? It took every lucky penny and luck itself to pull it off. Once the wheels had been set in motion there was no turning back. For a year it was a coin flip of would we go or wouldn't we. I felt if we could pull it off the trip was going to be gift enough but I couldn't let the day of his birthday arrive without something for him to open. I struggled, until I came up with the one thing I had that I could give him: time. 

Earlier in the year when we both were back in New York during a temporary break in the pandemic's timeline of being up and then down he had gone to his closet to see if he could find some clothes he wanted to take back to Madison. There was one piece he had been searching for. He was hoping it was New York. Our closet in New York is a wall long and lit so if it was there it couldn't hide from view. It was a grey wool knit jacket he was hoping to find. Sometimes an article of clothing can be more than just cloth and needlework. This jacket had that sentiment for him. Tucked between a black blazer and a navy blue car coat was the jacket. It was there on a white wooden hanger it's lapels still properly folded. The relief of finding something you haven't seen for a while or thought you might have lost is so satisfying. A bit of relief heaved from his chest and then a sad droop caught the outside corners of his eyes and mouth. As the light from the closet caught the back of the wool jacket it seared through a huge hole like a wartime searchlight. Moths had attacked the jacket and eaten away a piece just below the edge of the lapel.  He went from elated to devastated to resigned. Before he left to go back to Madison he told me I should just throw the jacket away.

I didn't. I kept it because I had an idea. I signed up for an online darning class; part of week long event sponsored by New York City and the New York sanitation department along with several vintage clothing shops promoting the reuse and rehabilitation of old or discarded clothing. I decided this would be my gift of time. I wasn't sure how this was going to turn out but I was willing to try and expose myself to what I knew was going to be imperfection.

We were still dealing with the remnants of Covid. The class would be a remote zoom experience. After signing up I received an email with information about what I would need to participate in the class. My ADHD kicked in, I merely skimmed the instructions only focusing on the pictorial part of the email. I did get all of the right equipment but I missed the parts about the size of a hole I should attempt for a first try at darning. The hole on the back of Rick's jacket was bigger than a baseball and one only a seasoned darner should try to fix. 

The darning lesson was to run about any hour. We were told to bring a round ball or piece of fruit to secure the area around the hole we were going to darn. Looking at my hole I chose the largest navel orange I could find. I automatically knew I was in trouble. Fortunately I decided to turn my video off so no one could see what I was doing. I knew I was way too deep once I saw several others with socks or sweaters with holes the size of pennies and dimes. The instructor began with a little overview of the importance of rehabilitating worn clothing. Then she began showing us what to do by example.

The instructions for darning are really pretty simple. You start by creating a checkerboard pattern of stiches going in one direction about a half inch beyond the hole you are trying to repair. Once you've created your pattern you begin weaving your yarn through the checkerboard in the perpendicular direction from your first set of stiches. Simple. Right?

Let's start from the beginning: selecting the right weight of yarn for the hole you're trying to fix. I thought the recommendation for what I wanted to do was a lightweight yarn. I also wanted to select a color that I thought would be a nice complement to Rick's grey wool blazer. I picked a medium weight steely blue yarn. The wrong selection on both counts: too thin and too hard to see where my stitches were against the grey of the jacket.

As the group leader went on with her instructions I, and several others were still trying to thread our needles. Shoving a fuzzy yarn through the eye of a needle, even a darning needle, is no easy task. There should have been a course in just how to squeeze yarn through a needle without using a series of selected curse words. By the time I threaded my first needle the instructor was way ahead of me showing off her immaculate checkerboard of white yarn against a red sock.

With no contrast between field and foreground color my checkerboard was only going to be imagined and would have to rely on luck to approximate any sort of a checkerboard pattern.

As my random pattern finally closed in on the hole it became very apparent that the strands of yarn traversing the hole were going to be far to far apart for me to assimilate any approximation of a tight weave over such a large area. I was f*!ck'd right from the start.

Unwilling to share my work with the group I realized I was going to be on my own for the rest of my darning journey. After the hour-long session with the darning class I knew it was going to be me and my needles and thread all alone. I would have to develop a new tactic for continuing.

For better visibility of my checkerboard stitch work I changed to a white yarn and went over the steely blue I had already sewn. I then doubled the grey/blue thread from one strand to two. This ended up doubling my needle threading time trying to push two widths of thread through the needles eye where one was difficult enough. The swear count went way up. 

With by now hours and hours of over and under and back again with more steely blue yarn to get the color of my patch back to a better deeper hue I finally got to a point where the patch seemed strong enough and full enough to pull it away from my navel orange. Once the orange had been removed my patching retained its phantom bulge as if I had given it birth. The belly of my patch remained rounded and full rather than flat.

As a final step I took a damp cloth, laying it over my handy work and tried to lightly iron out the bulge back into a smoother flatter surface. Did anyone know that wool burns? I now had added a slight brownish/greenish ting to my amebic patch.

Imperfection achieved.

Even with all its flaws it still felt right. I bundled it up in my suitcase in some tissue paper and twine. I hide it there until the night of Rick's birthday party in Tuscany. 

Rick had requested that none of us should give him any gifts. Everyone's presence in Italy was all he wanted, but I knew I wanted to do something; something small but meaningful. The patch on the back of this jacket that he had loved became a gift and a metaphor for our relationship.  Our life hadn't always been easy but it's been filled with the most beautiful highs and some very deep lows both of which we've survived. We've worked hard at mending our relationship during troubled times just like I mended this jacket. The mends are not perfect but the results are beautiful to me in their imperfections. It's not traditionally pretty but it's us. I did it with love. I hope he'll wear it and be proud of it not being perfect. I also know he already has plans for improving it.