A Tale of Two T-Shirts

Those of you who see me regularly or know me well might recognize my favorite T-shirt, since I wear it all the time.



This T-shirt has a special story behind it, which, aside from it being an awesome shirt, adds to the reasons why it's my favorite.

I got this T-shirt when Kelly and I lived in Oregon. It's from a vendor called Cretin Art that sells T-shirts with hand-drawn designs at the Portland Saturday Market. While most of the drawings are a little fantastical for my taste, he had this amazing scraggly tree that Kelly and I just fell in love with. Unfortunately, they didn't have any shirts with this drawing on it in my size, so they offered to make one specially for me. I got to choose the color of shirt and the ink color, and they mailed it to me since we didn't live in Portland and wouldn't be back at the market the following week. Since then, it's been my favorite T-shirt ever, and Kelly always loves when I wear it.

So as you can imagine, it was a sad day a few months ago when I had to pack up my "tree shirt" along with the other clothes that won't fit my growing belly anymore. I know it's a temporary condition, but even a few months -- and hot, summer months at that -- when I can't wear my favorite shirt are sad ones.

That is, until the other day, when I opened my closet to pack clothes for our recent anniversary get-away to St. Augustine, and discovered a white T-shirt mysteriously back in place after having gone missing for about a month. Where had it gone? How had it returned? Did Kelly find it somewhere and quietly hang it back in its place without mentioning it to me, even though he knew I had been confounded by its disappearance for weeks?

I moved the surrounding clothes back to take a look at the shirt, and what did I find? [GASP!]



Evidently, a couple of months ago, Kelly had secretly contacted the makers of my original shirt, asking them if they sold maternity T-shirts. They didn't, but said that if he could send them one they would print on it, or if he found one online, they would buy it, print it, and just charge him the total price. So my sweet husband, who loathes shopping, tried to shop for a maternity T-shirt online, but to no avail. When I happened to purchase one, he stole it from my closet, sent it to Oregon with a special request for the tree, and then returned it to my closet for me to find! Happy pregnancy to me!! My favorite shirt now comes in maternity size! It was the sweetest, most thoughtful gift ever! I just had to share my excitement, and brag on Kelly for being so amazing.