Plaid or Tartan?

The woman was of indeterminate age, and from a few feet away she could have been anywhere from thirty to eighty. As impossible as that might sound, it was true. There was nothing about her that would have classified her as anything but ageless; not the color of her hair, her clothing, the weight or shape of her body. And before this sounds impossible, I can tell you it is not. A woman dressed in jeans and a handmade cardigan, wearing sport shoes and a floppy hat is a cross-generational thing. At least it is in Maine, where I’ve lived for a number of years.

That leaves the hair, but that too is hard to assign to one age or another. My grandmother didn’t have a gray hair on her head (as she often noted), and she passed away at 65. A short to medium length is also not for just one generation. That’s one thing I really like about Maine: there isn’t much call for women in SKIMS and four-inch heels here. We’re more down to earth, much more.

I realize I began this story describing a woman, but never explained what she was doing, why she was there. 

Alone on the elongated green of the town, she was watching some children as they were coloring a strip of canvas that had been prepainted to look like the old sidewalks that were slate or cement slabs. Kids liked these demarcations, liked to use them in their games. They counted the seconds it took to skate or run down a block. They made hopscotch-like drawings and sometimes each claimed a sidewalk square to use as a frame for a drawing they then entered in their plein air art exhibit.

Now the sidewalk was one created by an artist. It could be rolled up and reused on another occasion, maybe. Except the children, the woman realized, were drawing on the ‘sidewalk’ with something that looked like paint. It wasn’t chalk; it was liquid and bright. It was paint! Green, red, blue… maybe other colors, all scrambling for their place. They were lovely to watch. The children were shrieking with joy as they wielded brushes, spoons, fingers, anything that could transfer the paint to the path that had been designed for it.

The woman was unable to tear herself away from the joyful scene and saw no need for it, so she continued to observe. She had a handbag over her left shoulder and occasionally reached into it to retrieve something. A book. A journal. A writing instrument. A phone. Something small and white that was probably a tissue. She wiped it on her face, maybe her nose or even her eyes. It was hard to tell without staring at her the way she was staring at the festive children.

Then the woman must have figured out how the group of children had come to be painting the colorful path through the green. It must have been organized by the arts committee called Arts in Schools, she should have concluded. The town wasn’t all that big and a lot of people knew things about a lot of other people. Nevertheless, she felt drawn to speak with somebody, to find out who had been so creative, while also keeping the youngsters’ energy in control. (Parents worry about those things, those dangerous activities like art and literature, which aren’t as easy to understand as sports, which are safe because they have rules.)

The fact was, the woman wanted to understand the game’s rules or, if it wasn’t a game, then the activity’s guidelines. It was about the incredible effect it was having on children so threatened by the digital world. What they were doing, the way they were playing, had nothing digital about it.

It was intriguing the woman and she had no defense. She kept moving closer, her blue cardigan now more open, but her handbag clutched close to her side…

Plaid

It is a

Grid

It organizes. Makes rules. Has

Squares that a probably for life’s stages (whatever those are)

Children at outdoor art festival.

Coloring on the path.

Bright: red and green and blue. Thick, oleagenous, moving

The colors cannot form a plaid, not if they are simply being dripped or tossed…

But I think the Maine plaid (there is such a thing) is blue, green, and red

Maybe I’m thinking of a tartan, not a plaid.

A plaid I remember, not from Maine.

My new new new plaid jumper with ruffled shoulder pieces like wide suspenders. 

So new and so plaid and so me that I don’t remember if I wore a blouse with it. 

Paint on the back porch. I don’t remember why it was there. It was green. There was nothing green inside or outside the house. But maybe I’m too little to remember.

I have to see the green paint, wet and drippy, not just the dried drops on the outside. Why is the top so easy to open? Why is a lovely brush right next to the can of green paint?

I love my new jumper, all red and green and blue and ruffly. It would be nice to have a green house to match. My mother doesn’t like this color. I heard her say that.

My mother is here and might cry. Then her very upset face is unable to hold a frown. She thinks a jumper is just a jumper, even if it’s new. The look of satisfaction I gave her was worth far more. I know this because my mother told me, and also there’s a photograph to prove it.

New. 

It’s hard to say how long the woman contemplated the children, but she seemed to enjoy studying the group. Her mind drifted briefly, and it’s the fault of the plaid again. She thought, oddly, of a quilt she was making and that had plaid fabric in it. The fabric was all salvaged from old items of clothing. It was a memory quilt. That’s the term when a person makes a quilt from used material, because if someone has worn or used it, there are often memories about that someone.

She had been criticized by other quilters for using plaid, because ‘people never used it in quilts’. A little like coloring a cow purple or painting outside the box. Don’t do it.

Yet her mother had laughed, and had lived happily ever after with red, blue, and green, plus a thousand other shades. How they did that is probably better told in another story.

As disappointing as it might seem, there’s not much left to tell. Strangely enough, I feel as if a lot of time has passed since I began talking about the woman on the green. It’s almost as if I’ve away for awhile. Maybe I’ll get back to the story another time. 

*****

A man wearing a dark uniform, looking as if he could be armed, is watching the woman. It looks like he is contacting a colleague dressed in similar fashion to let her know the woman is walking along the street where she’s stationed. She is to follow the woman, keep track of her every step.