The Long and Short of a T-shirt

 

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On a trip to Utah years ago, I bought a rust-colored, long-sleeved T-shirt. On the front are images of rocks and the names of five of the six national parks we visited. The caption reads: Utah Rocks. (It's a play on words.) 

     I remember standing in the store and contemplating which size to buy. A small fit me better, but I settled on a medium because it would offer more comfort in wearing and ease in putting it on and pulling it off. Back at home, my new T-shirt seemed too long and sloppy. I liked the memento and especially its autumn leaves color, but after wearing it only a few times, I stored it in a drawer with other T-shirts that were long on sentimental value and short on fit.

    Recently at the grocery store, I saw a woman in a long-sleeved T-shirt that was cut just right. It fell below her waist and above the hip, quite different from the average T-shirt. Pushing my grocery cart through the aisle, I wondered how she found the perfect fitting shirt, and I wished that mine fit as nicely as hers. If my T-shirts looked as nice as hers, I thought, I would start wearing them again.

    A light bulb suddenly flicked on. I could fix my too-long shirt! 

    I went home and dug it out of the drawer. I put it on, turned up the hem four inches and marked it with a pin. I laid it on the ironing board and with a pair of scissors cut off the excess, leaving enough for a half-inch double hem. With thread that almost matched, I stitched it on the sewing machine.

Voilà!

    My long-sleeved, rust-colored T-shirt is now wearable, and I have already shortened other ones that were too long and sloppy, including the green one my dear departed mom-in-law brought back from South Dakota, and the white one I bought at Mast General Store in Valle Crucis. Next up are the ones from Mountain Top Youth Camp and Old Salem.

    It dawns on me that almost every pair of pants and jeans and numerous dresses hanging in my closet have been shortened, but altering a T-shirt never occurred to me, as it hardly seemed worth the investment of time in something I paid a few dollars for. I have found, though, that twenty minutes of effort can result in hours of beautiful, bountiful satisfaction. 

    I derive great pleasure in solving a problem, even one as trivial as making an untidy cotton shirt more tidy. Solving a little problem builds the confidence to tackle bigger ones. The trick is to recognize what I can fix and what I can't and to accept the things I cannot change. Oh, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? That's because we have all read The Serenity Prayer:

    God grant me the serenity

   to accept the things I cannot change;

    courage to change the things I can;

    and the wisdom to know the difference.

     There is much beyond my wardrobe that needs fixing. Some of it I can change and some of it I cannot, as is the case with my five-foot-one height, but in looking on the bright side, there are ways to compensate for some of life's shortcomings. I can hem T-shirts all day long, and afterwards, I completely forget about being four inches too short.

    

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I can't wait for fall when I can wear my shirt again.