My 13 year old son has entered his savings era. It all started with a chance trip to Goodwill over the summer while he was skating around Glendale with a friend two grades down the road. He came home with a decent pair of Nikes and some questionable acid wash jeans. The purchase amounted to $26. The Nikes have never left his closet and the jeans never had a chance.
Still, the second option has become the new, more expensive and less accessible trip to the corner store. He went a few more times and acquired two random hoodies, one for Kendrick Lamar's 2017 album release and the other for the Washington Huskies team he'd never seen play. Then he started inviting me. I know my wallet and wheels offer obvious appeal, but I've also flattered myself into believing he wants me to do secondhand things with him because he trusts my taste in clothes. Not that he's holding down any FashionTok feeds, but I've spent a good portion of my life studying what to wear and how to afford it.
On a Monday without students in mid-September, we made a plan to visit some places. I discovered curated resale stores like Crossroads Trading Co. a few years ago, when I sold two bags full of clothing to stretch my irreconcilable shopping budget. Call it Math for Midlife Moms.
We arrived at the Silver Lake store first and split lanes at the entrance. She veered toward men's jeans and I went looking for dresses and skirts. I pulled out an $18 white cotton midi skirt, wondering if it could pass for a replica of the $200 Doen Sebastiane piece I coveted. My son found a pair of dark wash Levi's, many sizes too big, and he gestured for me to come take a look at them. We study our findings. We were both trying to see what fit.
I also started saving when I was a teenager. In the early '90s, Aardvarks on Melrose Avenue was a resale closet full of dreams. I used to go with my mom, who would let me go through every row of jeans and sweaters until she found a treasure or two. I focused as much on the other shoppers as I did on the clothing racks. If someone examined a blouse, they went to that section. If she held out a dress to me, she would pounce on me for a second look.
Aardvarks was like my imaginary mother's glamorous closet, open so I could dress up. It wasn't Koala Blue, the destination store down the street owned by Olivia Newton John. When my mom rejected a check there a few months earlier when trying to buy me a sweatshirt with her logo and a dress for her, the Xanadú singer herself wrote a note kindly forgiving the oversight. Nor was it Betsy Johnson, a luxury boutique with a femininity and price still inaccessible to me.
Sometimes my mom would reach for Aardvarks next to me, nudging me toward a babydoll dress or cardigan she liked. Usually she would just wait outside smoking cigarettes and come back to meet me in the checkout line, where I stood with treasures dangling from her arm. She would join me in a nicotine puff and say, “This place sucks.” Before reaching the register, he counted the crumpled bills to make sure we had enough for my purchases and could still afford lunch at Johnny Rockets before returning home to pass the shopping bags to my grandmother, who unknowingly financed these excursions.
Those Saturday afternoons in Melrose were the last days of shopping for mother and daughter before she crashed their Honda Civic hatchback, the one without the radio, that we were driving to go shopping across town. Before I was in high school, when my friends asked her why she wore stained dresses or took the bus in her bathrobe. Before he stopped caring what each of us wore, ate, or did on a weekend afternoon. He kept trying different combinations of psychiatrists, lithium, and diet pills, but none seemed to fit.
My mother passed away while I was pregnant with my first child, just as I was trying out motherhood myself. I have dug through a lot of pain, searching for parts of it to take with me as I mother teenagers and endure middle age. I have rediscovered her here, saving with my son as she saved with me.
While my son and I stood in the checkout line at Crossroads wearing a pair of Levi's that I know I wish were 501s, he came close enough to me to rest his chin on my shoulder. I reached out to ruffle his tousled blonde hair, which is the same as my mother's, when I noticed a young salesman in his mid-twenties sneaking a glance at our tender moment. He offered a quick smile and directed his gaze toward a stubborn tag on a pair of pants.
Next in line, we approached her with our sheet music and as she placed them on the counter, she looked at me and said, “You two are really sweet.”
I looked at my son, aware that any response could lead to ever-increasing embarrassment. “Thank you,” I said, trying to show my gratitude with a smile in my eyes.
“It makes me miss my mom,” he admitted. I looked at her shoulder-length brown hair and the delicate group of moles scattered across one of her cheeks.
“Trust me,” I said. “She misses you the most.”
