Nothing New Under The Sun.

Last night, it was raining. It's raining now, too, but we're talking about last night, and it was raining then.
I walked in, and I began to cook.
I soaked wild rice for thirty minutes and simmered it for forty-five, I chopped shallots and asparagus and broccolini and miniature heirloom tomatoes* and tofu and prepared a pepper-apricot glaze, I boiled, I roasted, I sautéed, and then, when it was over, when all was said and done but none was eaten, I did the dishes.

And that's when I realized that I was still wearing my raincoat.

When I was in middle school and high school, I'd do the same thing.
Granted, I'd be watching my mom cook rather than doing the cooking myself (I might have cooked, you know, if she had let me, but she didn't, so it's no use thinking about it), but I never, ever took my coat** off.
Until she'd say, "Katie, take your damn coat off."
And even then, I wouldn't.
She'd have to say it a few more times, and we'd have to sit down for dinner, perhaps, before I complied.

I had no reason to keep my coat on. But I didn't have much of a reason to take it off, either. I suppose that's why it stayed on.

Sometimes, and by "sometimes" I mean "since last night," I wonder if it all means something, if I was reluctant to shed my outerwear because I don't like to stay in one place for too long, or because I don't like to be at home, or because I do like to be at home, I just don't feel at home most of the time, or because I don't like to settle, or because I don't like to commit.

Someone once said something about how anthropologists are homeless or something.***
But that's neither here nor there.
(No, really, it's neither here nor there, because you know those homeless anthropologists, they're always moving around, never stopping here nor there.)
(That, friends, is an example of a joke that isn't very funny.)

But then, there's this:
When I was in middle school and high school, and the temperature began to drop, my mom wouldn't let me out of the house if I wasn't wearing a coat.
Sometimes I'd wear it outside and take it off as soon as I was out of her sight.
Sometimes I'd carry it and promise her that I would put it on later.
Sometimes I'd just leave it in the coat closet. (Such brazenness!)
But she wasn't born yesterday, under a rock, with the wool over her eyes.
"Katie, put your damn coat on," she'd say.

When I see her now, which, as of late, has been more often than usual, she still asks me if I have "enough" winter coats.

"Enough? What, like, one?"
And she repeats: "Enough."
Which to me, always sounds like: "Too much."

Man oh man, would you believe that I just thought about making some godawfulreference to monogamy?
And then (it gets better), that I considered bringing this whole discussion full circle by going back to the Resistance To Taking Off One's Coat = Anthropologist Syndrome/A Fear Of Commitment equation?
What do I look like, a professor?

If I clocked you in the head right now and knocked you out, would you mind?
It's nothing personal.
I just want to make you see some stars:

*There was this one miniature heirloom tomato, and, my God, I wish you could have seen it. It was far too large to be miniature, but I didn't want to say anything, you know, to give it a complex. But it was perfect. It was hideous. It was marvelous. It was grotesque. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
**Jacket?
*** Claude Lévi-Strauss (in his book Triste Tropiques) on the anthropologist's predicament: "Never will he feel himself to be 'at home' anywhere. He will always be, psychologically speaking, an amputated man" (Lévi-Strauss, trans. John Russell 58).