A letter from a reader

At 63, I had spent forty years holding my wrap on with one hand, and Frank had the pictures to prove it

The longest thing I write all year is the sign-up sheet for the church supper casseroles, and I hand even that to somebody else to read out. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it was my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on.

But three different women asked me about this wrap at Sunday breakfast, and I have now explained it so many times that it seemed easier to write it all down once.

I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise. For anything nice, a wedding, a baptism, Sunday lunch somewhere with tablecloths, I have always had a wrap. A pashmina, a stole, whatever the stores were calling them that year. It makes an outfit look finished, and it keeps the air conditioning off your arms in a fellowship hall.

What it does not do is stay on. I have spent forty years of weddings holding mine at the front with one hand, hitching it back up every time I reached for my glass, and fishing it off the floor when I stood up for the toasts.

I did not realize how bad it had got until last month, when Frank printed the pictures from our niece’s wedding. He laid them out on the kitchen table, and there I was in every single one, one hand clamped flat to my chest. He looked at them for a long while and said this.

You look like you are being sworn in, Peggy.

I laughed, because you do. Then I went through the old albums, and it was the same at the baptism, the same at our fortieth anniversary, the same at every party going back thirty years. Forty years of looking like a woman holding her own coat together.

The rest of the time, I gave up and wore the fleece. It stays on, I will give it that. It also makes me look like I am about to go out and clean the gutters.

How it happens

I do not think I am unusual in this, and I suspect a good many of you are nodding.

When you get to our age, the stores give you two kinds of thing to keep your shoulders warm. There is the pretty kind, a wrap or a shawl, which looks just right for the first ten minutes and then spends the evening sliding off one side. And there is the practical kind, a fleece or a zip-up sweatshirt, which stays put and looks like it came free with the Sunday paper.

Pretty, or practical. Pick one. So you do what I did. You wear the pretty one for occasions and hold it on all night, and you wear the practical one for everything else and stop expecting to look nice on a Tuesday.

I even had a safety pin living in the navy pashmina, pinned at the front like a diaper. That is how far I had got.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I had most wrong.

I thought the holding-on was just the price of looking nice. That a wrap was always going to slip, and a woman who wanted both hands free had to settle for a fleece.

It was my sister Sue who set me straight. We drove down to Galveston for the day the week after the pictures, and it was blowing a gale on the Seawall. Sue turned up in a long soft gray thing with tassels at the front, hanging just like a wrap. She had her phone in one hand and a bag of saltwater taffy in the other, and all the way down the Seawall it did not move an inch.

I asked her where her safety pin was. She held up her arm and said, It has got sleeves, Peggy.

That was it. Pretty or practical. I had spent forty years choosing between the two, and it had never once occurred to me that somebody might have just put the sleeves in.

The wrap is called the Lorraine

It is from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. Sue had given me the name on the Seawall, and I looked it up in the car on the way home, mostly to see what the catch was.

It is called the Lorraine. It is long and soft, with a nice brushed feel to it, and it goes around your shoulders like a wrap, with the two front ends hanging down long and finished off with tassels. The difference is that it has real sleeves built in, snug at the wrist, so it cannot slip off however much you reach and wave. It comes in khaki, which is the one I have, and in gray, black, red and white, which I will come back to.

It is light, which surprised me, because it looks cozy enough to be heavy. Light enough to keep on in the house, and still warm enough to sit outside on a cool morning, which I will get to. It sits nicely between the seasons, when it is too cold for nothing and too early for the big coat.

The cut is relaxed, so it moves when you move and does not pull across the back when you reach for something. It goes over a dress for a party, over good slacks for Sunday lunch, and over my gardening jeans, and it looks like I meant it every time.

There is nothing clever about it. It is simply a wrap that stays on, and I had stopped believing there was such a thing.

What happened at Sunday breakfast

On a Sunday Frank and I go to the early service and then to the little Tex-Mex place on the corner for migas. The first norther of the season had blown through that week, they had the heaters going out on the patio, and Frank likes to sit outside where he can watch the street.

I wore the Lorraine for the first time over a black top and my jeans. A woman at the next table asked where it was from before I had even sat down. The girl clearing tables asked on her way past with a stack of plates up her arm.

And the third was Gladys from across the street, who was there with her son and has lived across from us for twenty-two years without once passing comment on anything I have worn. She watched me sit there with both hands around my coffee, and said, You look like you have somewhere better to be, Peggy.

From Gladys, that is a sonnet.

What I noticed more than the compliments was my hands. I sat there for the best part of an hour with a mug in both of them, and I did not reach for my front once. When I stood up to go, it came with me. Nothing to pick up off the chair, nothing to hitch back on.

I had it on again on Monday for my plot at the community garden, which I would never have dreamed of doing with a wrap. Both hands on the basket, and it did not budge.

Three things I have learned since

One. Take the size you are now. It goes from a small right up to a 3XL, and the cut is relaxed, so there is no need to size up to get a sweater under it. Check the size chart against your own measurements. I took the large, and it sits on the shoulders the way it should.

Two. It goes over more than you think. I thought it would be for occasions only. It has been over a dress for a baptism, over good slacks for Sunday lunch, and over a cream sweater for the garden, and it looks right with every one. I have not bought a thing to go with it.

Three. You get your hands back. I had not realized how much of every party I spent holding myself together, quite literally. Now I can carry a plate and a glass at the same time, like everybody else.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because I am careful with money and I have already told you as much. The price made me suspicious.

The Lorraine is $60.95. It was $122.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I once paid close to that for a pashmina I spent a whole wedding holding on.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they have a sale on right now while the first of the fall stock comes in.

I do not trust a perfect score, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which is exactly why I read on. One woman from Eastland had written, “I wore it to my granddaughter’s wedding and danced in it. My daughter said it was the first party she had seen me enjoy without holding my front.”

That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you were sitting across my kitchen table with the coffee on, this is what I would say.

If you have spent years holding your wrap on with one hand, or given up on looking nice and gone back to the fleece, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a wrap will change your life. It will not. But there is something in looking finished and still having both hands free that I had stopped expecting, and I would rather you did not stop expecting it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on right now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And the first of the fall stock is already going, and once this stock is gone, it is gone.

Frank took a picture of me on the patio on Sunday. Both hands around my coffee. He said I did not look like I was being sworn in at all.

Peggy