"What do you do to unwind?"

Ohhh, nothing weird.

This prompt was the opener at our weekly admin meeting. I have come to appreciate icebreakers over the years. It’s a good time for an empath sleuth to find out which of her coworkers are strange, brilliant, quirky, or traumatized, all of which can be a tad harder to suss out with part-time remote work. If you’re scanning the Zoom boxes for nervous eye movements, though, you can glean a lot from what goes unsaid, as all people are waging some sort of battle. I like to try and guess which flavor of collapse haunts each of my colleagues. They are welcome to guess mine.

When my Zoom square lights up with “Uh, I’ll go!” I lamely answer the icebreaker/prompt with, “Reading!” which isn’t a lie, but I don’t think of reading as unwinding. Reading a good book is about engaging, becoming a better writer. While honesty serves well in writing, it isn’t really warranted in a workplace icebreaker exercise.

But there is a way that I unwind. Not numb out (that, sadly, would be what I do on Instagram, : / which I’m sorry to report in that it’s an addiction), but when I’m neither engaging nor numbing, but have found the sweet spot, then I’m unwinding. And if I’m unwinding, there’s really only one thing I must be doing: I’m leafing through an L.L. Bean catalogue. 

Whether it’s summer, fall, spring or winter, L.L. Bean, as reliably as the Jewish calendar, cues and invites you in to the ethos and customs of the season.

My favorite thing to do is to put on binaural trance beats in the dark of my room and, using my book light, peruse the latest L.L. Bean catalogue and admire the fabrics. 

I spend time with each fabric. Flannel is not pima cotton and both deserve their own separate mental cathedral of associations. In the women’s section I imagine wearing each item. In the men’s section I admire the men. In the scenes where a gathering of diverse friends are launching a kayak, I like to imagine the drama behind their Wilderness Weekend and what kind of issues they all have with one another. I look for conspiratorial glances, side eye, any signs of wear and tear on the bond of the happy campers. If there are none, I make them up.

This ritual makes me incredibly calm, sleepy, and satisfied.

…I once asked a long ago, former therapist of mine if he thought I was autistic. He laughed at me and said, “Well, do you like trains?”

I wanted to say, Listen here, you piece of shit, it’s a real question, but instead I laughed and said, “No. I don’t care about trains at all.” 

We both had a nice giggle and, in my head, I gently murdered him. 

In L.L. Bean there is no murder. They have an old woman model who is a svelte, White 50 years old. She represents old. There’s a chubby redhead who represents fat people. Though she is thinner than most of America, it’s still a nice gesture. I always feel like L.L. Bean is trying. 

After I have looked at all the fabrics, tried on the clothes in my imagination and looked for the cuter, more butch of the male models (the catalogue favors hungry-looking men and then puts them in ironed jeans, which doesn’t really sell the lumberjack thing), and after I’ve imagined the conflict and drama among all the friends, then it’s time… 

FOR COPY. 

Why do I, as a purportedly non-autistic person, LOVE the L.L. BEAN copy? It would be my tremendous pleasure to tell you. 

There are NO TYPOS. No typos and on a grand scale. The editing is ferociously good. And consistent and, if you read the copy, and you don’t so I’ll just tell you, it flows with a marvelous consistency across the whole catalogue.

Here’s some classic copy from L.L. Bean:

Page 23 of their latest reads, “Born from the most celebrated styles of our heritage. Made from marled cotton yarns, with distinctive texture and a versatile medium weight. Fair Isle is more substantial than our solid versions. Imported. Machine wash, dry flat.”

You thought Mary Oliver wrote that, but no, hers was the other poetry.

There’s more to love even than the prose. The size and rustle of the pages, their thickness, is just so. Not like The New Yorker, which has pages that are too thin. (Oh, I don’t read The New Yorker. I just touch the pages, in dismay.)

The L.L. Bean catalogue has a sturdiness. The medium is the message. The pages themselves are trees. 

The names of the colors are siren songs of synesthesia, evoking not just the shade but its taste, emotion, and mythology: Katahdin Khaki Fair Isle, Deep Wine, Gunmetal Gray, Rose Shadow, Larkspur, Burnt Mahogany, Washed Buchanan, Blue MacKellar. Deep Loden Donegal.

And of course with any three-dimensional, IRL catalogue comes a nice memory of the 90s. My mother, Rae, on the phone trying to order a particular turtleneck, talking to a friendly Midwestern woman in a call center — inevitably pausing the transaction to tell her she’s “doing a great job” and to ask, “And where are you, physically? … Oh! How’s the weather there?” 

(Later, with earnest curiosity) “And what does your son do?” 

(Later still) “Ok, but listen to me: You’re an incredible mother. You have a light surrounding you, I can hear it in your voice. I want you to trust me: Everything will turn out ok.” 

And by the end of the call my mother has changed this woman’s life and also gotten a turtleneck discount. 

The next morning, the rustle of the catalogue-page turn — over the nearer crunch of my Puffins cereal. The black-penned circle around the one shirt and pants set that might fit. 

My mother on the phone the next weekend: “But do you carry that in periwinkle? …So listen, I spoke to your colleague last week, yes, Susan, Sharon, yes it must have been her then, Charlotte, I spoke to Charlotte and she said….” And on it would go. Until a new woman in the Missouri call center has her life changed.

L.L. Bean represents not a regressive vision, since there was never a real L.L. Bean catalogue we can go back to living in, but an alternate reality. A golden Labrador curled up on his plaid dog bed, a Maine morning in the year of never was. 

And the in-person store! 

Laid out with warm, wide aisles for me and my sister-in-law to thumb and contemplate every hem while she pushes the stroller on its mountain bike tires. Everything durable, made to last. 

Or the time I went recently with my mother, Rae, and we met a Belgian Malinois service dog in training. This L.L. Bean store, the dog’s trainer said, was a great place for the dog to come and work on navigating distraction while staying calm. 

(Me too!)

The Gumshoes with laces you can personalize. The cashier with pronouns affixed to their name tag. The special issue hunting catalogue they mailed to my Brooklyn apartment? L.L. Bean is a slice of Americana. Left wing, right wing, bird wing. A utopia where everyone does their outdoorsy thing in peace.

The men look ravenous in the L.L. Bean catalogue (except the one husky, bearded man, presumably already coupled with the chubby redhead? Or are we to assume Wilderness Weekend kayak trip is when their friends attempt to set them up, because of their shared interest, in having a BMI higher than 19?) I think I should like to feed these twinky men, but I remember I can’t cook. That’s ok, none of the L.L. Bean wives seem to cook. They chop wood while giggling, which I think is a very dangerous way to do that. 

If I should ever be invited into the L.L. Bean catalogue to represent all women under 4’11’’, I would elect to chop wood with an incredibly serious face. Something like the “Heeeeeere’s Johnny!” face in The Shining. I would commit to the realism of it. Because I went to acting school, not catalogue school. 

—Will they or won’t they?—

In the icebreaker before our meeting, everyone gives solid, normal answers like: take a walk, play video games, drink a margarita. I wonder if everyone is being honest about how they unwind.

I am picturing a towering stack of Henleys in hues of autumn, sky, lake, and cabin.

“The traditional seven-button Henley you have come to trust since 1912.”

I would, indeed, trust nothing else. 

Later that night, the catalogue slips from my bed, a gentle rustle of lacquered leaves. The supple spine now encircled by treelined pages that flutter and settle to join the forest floor of my bedroom. I am maple, I am mist.

I am unwound.