Yesterday was a wonderful, sunny, warm day.

I woke up sounding like a deep sea diver breathing through water, then coughed and hacked up some more cheese curdish stuff from my tired lungs.

I lay abed wheezing like this until several hours later, showered and then went out, long after my mother’s own solo departure from the room. She went to wander the city and use up some of the gift certificates I have. She spent the afternoon doing the
Lyttleton Wildlife Cruise, checked out Cathedral Square and had an eggs benedict with smoked salmon at Le Cafe for breakfast.

When I did emerge I wandered out short-sleeved into a gorgeous day with a lovely breeze, slathered in so much sunscreen I could have slid down the street. I intended only to change money, and buy proper tissues before the three day weekend (Canterbury’s Cup & Show weekend is on, everything shut for Fri, Sat & Sun) and pick up my Green Spot whiskey from Whisky Galore but I walked past a little vintage shop (Two Squirrels) on Hereford on my way to Colombo St and got sucked in by a beautiful 50s cotton dress with blue and green flowers on a white background on a mannequin in the window. Gorgeous dress, with such fine details and darts and pleats, for a shaped figure requiring boobs a la Genevieve and an ass a la Jennifer Lopez. One out of two attributes ain’t bad. The kind of vintage to make my heart sing, and perfectly suited to a summer’s celebration of release from 13 months of winter incarceration.

Wheezed and sniffled and coughed up the short flight of stairs in the old wooden building stuffed with a variety of antique shops selling jewelry, tchotchkes, furniture, decorations, and clothing. I mentioned it to the woman there, who addressed me as “sweet” about as many times as her chatter required commas. A charming verbal tick in a nice Kiwi accent, delivered with enthusiasm and a love of vintage wear. I tried it on. Too big, it hung on me like a sackcloth, none of the darts and shaping hanging on me where it should to give that hourglass silhouette the 50s and 60s styles deliver. I was disappointed.

But I spotted another lovely vintage 50s dress on the rack, a pale silvery blue silk, like moonlight on snow, with teal blue embroidered flowers on it, a brocade silk, with a waist line and a scooped neck to die for. The bodice is lovely, fitted mostly to the waist, where it flows out with oodles of fabric hanging heavy and cool against the skin to mid-calf. It swings divinely. THAT fit. I bought it. $100NZ. An impulse, a splurge and a reward for myself on a sunny warm day of freedom. I intend this cocktail dress for a Christmas party in Auckland with a posh friend. I will also bring it to Pole for next winter for one of the dinners. It’s a stunning dress and I look awesome in it. I want to dance in it.

Except my boobs weren’t anywhere near the darts. Them crazy 50s bra lines. I needed about 2 inches of lift to get mine near where they needed to be. I tried the dress on sceptically, believing my boobs would never achieve the heights they once did for maybe a year as a teenager, but I reached in and hauled up my bra straps, and thereby my boobs, to see what I would look like in it with the proper chest positioning. Size good, droopage not so good.

The owner of the shop recommended I go for a fitting at Ballentynes, just up the street and around the corner, for a proper bra to get them up there. Expensive bloody department store, reeks of money. But without hesitation I walked into the lingerie dept in my torn and saggy jeans (yet another pair of Levi’s only just over a year old giving up the ghost on me, WTF?) in my pale and bulbous body with a daypack on my back hanging fleece and water bottles on it, and asked for a bra. For a dress.

After spending NZ$100 on a dress, was I going to balk at the price of a bra to put my boobs in it right? Not likely. Was I going to accept the stigma implied in the slightly airy tone of the place that shrieked You Do Not Belong But We Will Be Polite To You Anyhow? Nope. Walked up to the first clerk available and said I needed a bra. For a dress.

She led me into the dressing room.

I removed my t-shirt and she measured me, not once indicating to me that she was appalled at the hairy armpits or the saggy boobs. Once around the ribcage (I’m small of chest in that regard) and once around the boobs. Then she asked me a few basic questions like did I mind the colour or without lace or what? I pulled out the dress and showed her what I was trying to get my boobs into. She held it up, tilted her head, and left the dressing room. A few minutes later she came back with two bras, same one in two different sizes. Commenting on the discrepancy between the size of my chest and the size of my “chest”.

I dislodged my boobs in front of her, from my black lace bra, and she slid my arms into the new bra, then walked around back as I leaned over to place my breasts in the cups, and did me up in the back. An odd way to enter a bra, for me. She adjusted the straps and I stood up, yanking bits of stray boobage into place.

Holy cow. Me grandma. Yup, a granny bra. A lovely soft cream lace, not itchy at all, a hefty pair of straps and cups that covered the entirety of each boob sans bulge. Very comfortable, actually. A bra with DARTS, and suddenly my chest was anchored firmly to my front somewhere closer to my clavicles than they have been for decades, and they were not going to BUDGE from that position. No bouncing, no shifting, all sorts of frontage going on. Perfect for the dress. I tried the dress on and it was divine. Boobs exactly where the darts were. I could probably do handstands in this bra and nothing would shift, they would continue pointing right out there.

But then I noticed the unsightly bulges on my hips/waist where my panties cut into the fat I’d accumulated there over the winter. She went and found some granny panties to cover that up, and I was set to dance, to twirl, to move about in a comfortable, gorgeous dress at a fancy party.

Except for the hairy legs and the knotty toes boot-clad far too long. Oh, and no I won’t shave the armpit hair. I have so little I can hardly even make a proper feminist statement by not doing so.

Bra NZ$60. Panties NZ$25.

Need shoes. Perhaps ballet flats in silver or white or teal?

Before I left the dressing room the clerk adjusted my own black lace bra for me, tsking just a little, bringing the boobs up at least an inch in them. A bit of a revelation, that.

From there I sailed down Colombo St to Whisky Galore, stopped in at Toff’s (used clothing) on Gloucester and bought a purple cotton sarong (NZ$6.50) with a nice print and a three quarter sleeve white cotton eyelet top with gentle
green vines and purple flowers, button up, slightly fitted. (NZ$6.50) Summer clothes, summer weather, summer freedom. Looked for shoes. Everything has heels and I will not be wearing heels of any sort for a very long time at this point. No luck.

It was a longer walk than I expected to Whisky Galore, out past Valentinos. Picked up my two bottles of Green Spot, had a “wee dram” of another very expensive fine whisky which cleared up my lungs IMMEDIATELY, but made me lightheaded. Whereupon I sailed back down the sidewalk to Thomas’s, fell into bed and slept until Mum came back from her adventures. Mum had a marvelous day, saw a few Hector’s dolphins, the harbour and bought a scrunchy cream cotton knit hat with an adjustable wire brim at the market in Cathedral Square. She’s having fun and being very independent.

Then I cooked dinner. What fucking bliss. I made basmati rice (GOOD RICE!!!!!!!) and did a quick stir fry in olive oil of zucchini, carrots, onions, garlic, fresh ginger, and a chopped tomato added in at the last moment. Salt, pepper, soy sauce for flavour and sauce and pillowed by a mound of this lovely delicate white rice that stuck together in these delicate long grains. Colours on my plate orange, red, green and white like a flag of freedom, half an avocado on the side. Mum had wine. I had water. Consumed the whole plate. Moaning the whole time. FRESH vegetables, good rice, the flavours were divine and clean and
each bite had the taste of the slightly crisp vegetable and a tinge of ginger and garlic, and the rice as the simple comfort and fragrant bed upon which I delivered it.

But I have not really budged much yet. Next year I will get off the Ice, get a room for a week paid in advance, and just stutter to a halt. No visitors arriving right on the heels of my redeployment, and I bloody hope no lung issues again or broken foot. Just stop and roll over in bed looking out the window at the wind ruffling the tree leaves and the blue sky brocaded and water-coloured with clouds. Cook a little, shop a little, sleep a shit tonne of hours, willfully spend time being profligate with water in showers.

I’ll admit having my mother here is lovely and fun and I’m excited to unfurl with her and show her NZ, but I am so exhausted I can only feel guilt at being unable to perform the simplest function like getting Brad’s (of Brad and Me and Ruby Make Three) van WOFed and registered so we can actually get on the road and visit NZ. She’s seeing Christchurch and the airport. I can barely organize my shower things, let alone make calls and make appointments and make inquiries about schedules and such. I am still sick and dragging.

Similarly stunned winterover Polies wander solo and in occasional random clusters around Christchurch, barely able to get it together enough to leave the city and start their vacations. And most of them having got off a week or more before me. And they healthy. I seem to be the only one felled by every germ that winked at me off the first
plane to Pole. NO immune system. Ass kicked on so many levels.

But nonetheless, yesterday was a lovely day.