Well, maybe not anything. I probably can’t win the Gold for figure skating at this stage in my life. Especially since I’ve never skated. But… as Lady Catherine de Bourgh says about the pianoforte in Pride & Prejudice, “I’d have been a great proficient if I’d ever learned.”

You may wonder where I came by this bold confidence and almost-over-the-edge optimism. I think it started with the purple coat.

We were driving through downtown Kansas City this week, and I had a sudden flashback. I was fourteen years old, wandering outside the convention center with my fellow Future Homemakers of America. We had escaped from the annual Home Show where we discovered futuristic inventions like a bed filled with water. The waves made it appear to be breathing!

Eventually, we found ourselves up an escalator in a fine department store. And I was face-to-face with the most glamourous piece of clothing I could ever imagine. Purple paisley crushed velvet with a black fur collar and cuffs. The coat looked like something girls wore in London or New York City. It cost $200 at a time when we paid $2.00 for the fabric to make a nice dress.

“Try it on.” The voice shocked me, because it didn’t belong to any of my giggly girlfriends. It was my mother, the wise trip chaperone who had followed us at a discreet distance. She knew a bunch of little farm girls should not be turned loose in Macy’s.

“I can’t try it on,” I whispered. “Did you see the price tag?’

“Of course you can try it on,” she said. “There’s no reason you can’t.”

I’m pretty sure I can still feel the weight of that coat on my shoulders, the satiny lining against my arms. I feel it every time I start a new writing project and wonder if I’ll ever write to the end of the book. I feel it when I navigate a new city or explore a new friendship. When I face new technology or birth a fresh idea.

I feel the purple coat in those situations and I hear, “Of course you can try it on. See how it fits. See how it feels. You have every right to this experience. And you might even buy such a coat someday, because, really, you can do anything you want.”

That’s what I heard in Macy’s a million years ago.

I hope you are hearing the same thing today.