Coat Girl Comes to Jesus (A Journey to Becoming a Grown Ass Woman)

   To a seven year old, raised in a small Midwestern city, being a grown lady required owning two items; a Crockpot and a navy blue, Ralph Lauren blazer. I was given my very own slow-cooker as a wedding present from my mother’s friends. I spent the first six months of marriage delighting in the delicious meals I could create using frozen chicken thighs. After a brief love affair, my Crockpot, the very symbol of grown-upness, was stashed under the kitchen counter. My husband deemed these first six months of culinary expression as my yellow period; in reference to the copious amounts of cream of chicken and buttered bread crumbs used in each creation. To exacerbate the starchy color palette, my hearty casseroles were usually accompanied by a slice of corn bread or a baked potato. As for the blazer, as the eighties died out, so did my desire to wear my mother’s pleated jacket (complete with shoulder pads and gold buttons). As a sidebar confession, I recently saw a similar blazer in a department store and had a delirious urge to slip on the jacket and admire myself in the dressing room mirrors. Fortunately, my somewhat developed sense of fashion allowed me to walk by, only admiring its gold stitching from afar. 
   Although I continued to wait for some external christening of adulthood, my first few post collegiate years would reveal that adulthood was not as simple as donning a navy blue blazer, transforming into some kind of domestic goddess or even becoming someone’s wife. There would be nothing magical about my transformation, and being an exceedingly defiant person, I ensured that my journey into grown-up land would be as painful as possible. The beginning of my journey was marked by my college graduation. I was engaged, educated and moving to New York City. There was no doubt in my mind that within weeks I would be a success. Besides, who wouldn’t want to hire an un-experienced, entitled twenty-two year old? My dreams of the Great White Way were quickly interrupted, and instead of donning grease paint on the professional stage, I was hostessing on the Upper West Side. I had managed to convince a snobby French restaurant that I had plenty of hostessing experiences and would be able to handle the often hostile brunch crowds. Unable to even remember seat numbers, on busy nights I was promptly downgraded from hostess, to coat girl. It was winter, and the Upper West Side folks, or rather patrons (folks is a very Midwestern turn of phrase), could not fathom anything more terrible than hanging their coats on the back of their chairs. This is where I came in. I was instructed to use one hanger per table, meaning that up to six coats would be piled onto one hanger and then shoved into a closet the size of a modest pantry. The hanger received a number tag and the customer was supposed to receive the matching tag. I am not a very big person. In fact, my family often refers to me as a pocket person. Standing at a whopping five feet, one can imagine the centripetal force required to get six coats up to the top rack. The coats would often fall off the hanger into the corners of the closet, which I referred to as “coat purgatory”. Coat purgatory was a place where coats just sat and waited for the coat girl to frantically save them from a life of moth balls and dust.
   On a particularly cold New York night, one coat managed to escape coat purgatory entirely; I still believe that it found some kind of worm hole in the back of the closet and visited the south of France for a few hours. I dove into the closet looking for coat number 23, which was described to me as a very expensive, floor length fur. I checked every hanger, every tag and coat purgatory five times; coat number 23 was MIA. I had never had to tell someone I had lost their coat and I just stared at her in a defeated way uttering the words, “It’s gone.” “It’s gone?” she said. “How can it be gone?” “I don’t know,” I said. She dove into the closet herself, un-hanging the other coats and throwing them into a large pile next to the bar. A strange feeling came over me. Instead of kicking into coat girl hyper-drive, I completely shut down. As my managers dug though the closet, I stared at the disgusting restaurant wall paper, seething with rage and entitlement. “I should not be here,” I thought. “I am smart, sassy and a member of National Honors Society.” But it was clear that my ability to write a killer research paper and translate Latin verbs was not going to negate the fact that I had managed to lose a four thousand dollar coat in a closet the size of my apartment bathroom. After thirty sweat producing minutes and soul burning glares, the coat was finally located. My managers apologized for me and picked up her bill. Any other human would be apologetic and grateful they weren’t fired on the spot. Instead, I spent the rest of my shift harboring fantasies that mostly involved the desecration of expensive coats, and asking myself what kind of monster would own a floor length fur anyway. 
   On the way back to Queens that night, I had what my mother refers to as a “come to Jesus meeting,” with myself. Despite the fact that I had spent the last few months catering to wealthy guests and their fur wearing ways, the real question at hand was, “Who did I think I was?” I could not even hang up a coat correctly and yet I still expected people to bow down to my greatness. The truth was, the world didn’t owe me anything. The beginning of my transition into adulthood was when I finally realized that I was not the main character in my life story. I went back to my apartment that night and bought myself a ticket home. I came home, defeated, tired and dog broke. Although deflated, my struggles had done a fine job burning away all the excess baggage from my person. The same baggage that had allowed me to become the lead character in my own made for TV Lifetime drama. I didn’t sell all my worldly processions, join the Peace Corps or adopt an eastern religion, I had just managed to take a few crucial steps into grown up land. It is not often that I eat at a restaurant fancy enough where they hang up your coats, but my husband and I happened upon such a restaurant on a Valentine’s Day. Behind the hostess stand was a tiny closet, filled to the brim with red and gray wool coats. I handed the young woman my coat and in return she handed me a small tag with the number 23. Number 23, the MIA, floor length fur that will live in infamy. I clutched the tiny tag and thought about how far I had come. For the first time in my life I felt a little grown up, but just a little.