Drowning in Abundance

Wow.  Oh wow.  Today is the first day I have felt different.  Changed.  Totally out of place in the modern age.  This morning I went to the grocery store, and suddenly the world flipped upside down.  Instead of feeling strange in my dress at the store, the dress felt familiar and the store felt strange.  Really strange.

Everything looks, feels and smells all wrong, slightly scary even.  It’s too loud, too bright, too much.  I notice the smells first. All around me wafts a vast array of intense smells, but they’re not natural.  Not food, but products.  Like something out of a science fiction novel, everything smells enhanced, forced, and loaded with chemicals. I can sense them all around, unfamiliar and vaguely threatening.

The store feels cold, and the chilled air flows all around.  And it’s huge!  After spending most of my time in my pared-down kitchen, full of candlelight and softer colors, the grocery store is an assault on my senses – bright colors, print everywhere, plastic, strange shapes, and so much stuff I can’t take it all in.

The absolute, excessive abundance makes me feel a little anxious.  I have so many choices, so many decisions.

In my long dress, apron, and hand-knitted shawl, I’m a curiosity.  I am quaint, or very peculiar.  People either step away a little, or smile at me kindly.  They offer to help me, or apologize for getting in my way.  They recognize that I’m out of place, and now I recognize it too.  I don’t really mind being looked at a bit, because I’m here to teach living history after all, but now I no longer feel the need to explain why I’m dressed this way.  In fact, when people ask, I really feel like saying, “Because this is how we dress.  And y'all dress very strangely.  How can you bear to show so much skin?  Don’t you feel naked?”

I like the look of speculation, as people wonder what I’m up to.  I like not answering it.  I’m perverse that way.

In the parking lot, I ran into a Civil War friend.

This is First Sergeant Josiah Henry Newton.  He doesn’t usually wear the hair clip.

I felt surprisingly relieved to see someone who knew me; I mean someone who knew this me, Abigail.  (My Civil War name is Abigail Baker Kirkland.)  It’s like being in a foreign country and running into another American.  Sgt Newton doesn’t think it’s at all strange to see me like this, since he seldom sees me dressed in anything else, and he’s usually dressed to match.  (Okay, he probably does think it's strange, but at least he gets it.)

Last week I was asked to give a talk on living history.  I felt a bit pompous, actually, being called a living historian.  Today I know I am a Living Historian.  Because I’m living it.

Abigail