Dadrobe

It occurred to me that my new bathrobe is almost the same color as my dad's. That makes me feel really good.

It's a very similar color -- mine's navy, his is a medium-dark blue that's like what if navy faded gently in the wash over a long and undemanding life of being a carefully-looked-after garment -- because the color options for men's clothing tend to be similar, and few.

I know lots of transfemme people delighting in the many more colors and other choices of clothing that are now readily available to them, after a previous lifetime where everything was black, navy or beige. But I'm delighting in the smaller number of options: I was always overwhelmed by choices I didn't care about, rules that heavily restricted what could be worn with what: everything had to be an outfit and I was always worried about getting it wrong (largely thanks to my mom being incredibly fussy about these things so my childhood was a minefield of standards that felt incredibly arbitrary to me and which I never seemed to be notified of until I'd breached them).

I'd been thinking about this all the time I've been wearing masc clothes; maybe unable to articulate it but it felt as clear a benefit to me as pockets are. But one thing that hadn't occurred to me until my bathrobe reminded me of my dad's is that the restricted color options inevitably mean I'll have clothes that remind me of clothes that belong to the men I like.

Shuffling around in my pajamas and bathrobe and slippers early this morning, in the glow of the under-cupboard lighting in the kitchen sleepily making tea for others made me feel (and even sound: similar style of slippers) like my dad, who is always up first and makes the coffee.

I've spent many cozy mornings on my visits home, reading social media and library books while my dad reads the newspaper. It's a quiet and cozy start to the day, which I'm smiling now to be reminded of by my silly outfit: teal t-shirt, stripey pajama pants, navy bathrobe with black trim, navy slippers with red trim and good soles you can take the garbage out in.