Shopping with Ghosts

So I was in Bloomingdale's today, because I needed pants and you can buy pants there, and they also had huge sales on cashmere sweaters, cashmere sweaters being one of my weaknesses. I took a big armload of sweaters in with me: pastel Easter colors, salmon and candy pink and grape-y purple and soft baby-duck yellow. And as I tried them on, I could pretty much hear exactly what my mother would have said if she'd been there:

"Do you like that color?" hesitantly, not wanting to set me off. I wasn't so sure about it either. And, maybe a bit more insistently, with that worry line between her eyes that was practically the only wrinkle she had:

"Yellow isn't the best color on you." (We were in agreement on this: I rarely wear yellow, but this particular yellow was so pale, lemon-y and benign, the material so double-ply soft. The color still didn't work, and it was too clingy, anyway.)

"You can look better than that," about a sweater ($29.99! For cashmere!) that made me look lumpy.

I put all of them back except for an unexceptionable one in candy pink (we were always of the opinion that I look good in pink), pretty sure she'd approve.