Dances with Scarves

My husband hates scarves.  When I ask him how they look - because I keeping hoping, he answers, “Beautiful, now if only you’d lose the scarf and wipe that stuff off your face.”

I should be more grateful for a husband who wants only the raw me, but the devilish part wants him to think all the time and money I spend on mineral and fabric beauty is worth it. 

“You mean my makeup?” I ask in distress.  

“Makeup, paint, what’s the difference.  Why do you want to hide yourself under that stuff?”

“I don’t hide,” I instruct, “I enhance.” And I try my hardest to turn on an allure born of confidence, wrapping my slinky scarf around his neck to pull him close.

“It’s much better back there,” he smiles, referring to the scarf behind his back.  

“Well, if you don’t like it you’d better have a talk with your family before Christmas,” I smile and his romantic green eyes lift in annoyance.  

My husband hates scarves, so it’s only fitting that my consistent presents from his travel savy family are scarves, and I’m amassing a distinguished collection. I try to wear them despite my husband’s disdain, but somehow our date night is always tinged by the scarf, and they are too impractical to where anywhere else.  Following the fashion advice of Edna in “The Incredibles”, who had her clients “lose the cape” because they led to too many fatal accidents, I don’t wear scarves as part of my daily dress because they attract stains and get stuck in everything from the washing machine to cabinet doors, and even the garbage disposal.  So they sit in a drawer collecting dust, waiting for their turn to be felt and appreciated.  

Finally on one sunny morning when my children are hounding me like little alarm clocks and I keep hitting the snooze button, they sneak into my scarf drawer.  Soon they are like kittens in a ball of loose yarn, rolling in billowy softness, running down the hall and flying them like kites.  I drag myself out of bed, turn on Raffi Sing A Long and we dance, swishing them here and there.  I am the bull fighter and they are the little steers crashing head first into silk curtains.

"You’re teaching our kids to scarf dance?”  My husband says after coming out of the shower.

“Might as well put them to use!”  I announce with a few tucked in my pajama pants and do a belly dance of sorts.

Before long the children cover him with their scarves, giggling and tickling his face with frayed ends.

“I love scarves now,” he says jovially and wraps one around his head like a Babushka, batting his eyes in playful fashion.  If only I had those eyelashes …

—Sarah B.