Closet Keeping, Part Two

Here are three of the items from my wardrobe that I decided to keep even though I don't actively wear them:

 

        Wool Skirt (Circa 1960s, worn early 1990s). If I could manage to squeeze myself into this skirt without removing internal organs, it would still be one of the favorite pieces in my wardrobe. It represents not only my junior high school years, but also my first experience trying out my mother’s fabulous collection of clothing. I have been told that my mom and aunt (aka the Strother Girls) were quite the head turners in their youth and wore some great self-made and department store clothes. This skirt was my first find from “shopping the attic,” which quickly became a yearly fall ritual. Vintage wasn’t cool yet, but I didn’t care. I loved the swish of the heavy wool and the way the orange yarns stood out among the mélange of black, grey and cream. The fabric was decidedly itchy, but I just made sure I wore it with good black tights and a smooth camisole under my sweater.  It was my go-to skirt for dress up days before band performances and I once wore it to present my science fair project to the judging panel.

         Cotton Shift Dress (early 1990s-mid 2000s). This dress dominated my summer wardrobe for over a decade. There was a time when if you sniffed it, even freshly washed, you could smell beachy air and sunscreen. It was a random, inexpensive find – my mother and I were buying supplies for our annual beach trip and its colorful and unique pattern caught my attention. I had a love affair with brown since it worked well with my reddish hair and freckles, so I paired the dress with any number of brown and tan sandals and light sweaters. Mostly, I wore it barefoot and over a bikini – lounging on large, flat river rocks, strolling along the beach, hanging out on a boat or reading in a porch swing. Once, when I was packing up an apartment in 90 degree heat, a friend commented that she couldn’t believe I was wearing a dress while moving furniture and I laughed since it felt more like second summer skin than something to wear to a barbeque. Eventually, the zipper broke and I discovered it cost far, far more to repair than the original purchase price.

           Velveteen Jacket (2000s). I fell in love with this jacket the moment I saw it hanging in a boutique on the Getreidegasse in Salzburg, Austria.  It embodied all of the things I love about European fashion: luxe fabric, sophisticated detail, incredible fit. I feel like in the United States, you often have to shop at a much higher price point to find the same qualities in clothing. The jacket has an edgy quality that was certainly aspirational when I first bought it, but soon became familiar as I wore it out to impossibly chic clubs and galleries in Spain, Italy, Germany, the UK, Netherlands and New York. I think my confidence in wearing it helped me take more chances in terms of experimenting beyond my usual style. I used to put the jacket over some of my other European finds – a bronze leather mini skirt, slim grey cigarette pants, or jeans with a perfect cut. It makes me think of young, fun times hopping trains, sitting in cafes, navigating cobblestone streets and looking at great art.

Closet Keeping, Part One

     In the past few months, I’ve been parsing our house in preparation for our move next summer.  In my rich experience with moving, especially moving without knowing how much space you will have at your next destination, I’ve learned that sum of your possessions has a direct correlation with the quantity of stress you will experience in process.  I’ve also learned that the earlier you start preparations, the less hair pulling, stress eating and general unpleasantness you incur during the actual event. You also don’t have to worry about rewarding movers with a bottle of fine liquor for packing a storage unit beyond their capacity guidelines (that is a story for another day). 

     My first project has been clearing out our closets. I chose this task first because aside from books, it is the largest undertaking. Plus, a consignment shop recently opened in our neighborhood giving me timely motivation.  I figured that consigning clothes would give me the opportunity to generate money from spending money* and to narrow down our personal belongings at the same time. It’s win-win all around. I have a habit of seasonally weeding and donating clothes, but this is the first full-scale review I’ve done since we moved into our house.

     When I started to sort through my clothing, I decided that I had to be unemotional. If something didn’t fit, if I hadn’t worn in in at least a year, or if I had several things just like it, it had to go. I separated every piece of clothing I owned into piles: keep, consign, donate, and undecided. Some clothes went easily into the piles. Others foundered between keep, consign and undecided. 

     I was reluctant to get rid of some of the items in the undecided pile because even though I no longer wore them, they held a certain place in my heart. The red skirt I wore the day Matt proposed still fit, but I have only worn it a few times since. I reminded myself that there are several photographs of me in it, so I finally decided that someone else might love it like I did. Other pieces were not so easy. Just taking a picture would not do them justice in my memory. I noticed that the ones that were the hardest to make decisions about were decidedly tactile. Touching them instantly took me back in time and made my memories more vivid.

     As I mulled these items over, I remembered an article about five personal belongings you should preserve for memories. One of the contributors posited that it was just as important to save some everyday clothes as it was to keep special things like wedding dresses. This made me think about an exhibit I visited years ago at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It was a chronology of British fashion, from work uniforms to coronation gowns that spanned several centuries. It was fascinating timeline that I later used as inspiration for decorating a 50^th anniversary charity ball by asking former patrons to borrow and exhibit their gowns representing different decades. 

     Why couldn’t I curate my own personal clothing timeline? It certainly wouldn’t be as voluminous as the V&A exhibit, but what was the harm in keeping a few carefully selected items to let me have the occasional trip down memory lane? I decided that I would keep up to five everyday items that I no longer wear and “induct” them into my permanent collection. Before they could be included on this list, and not just put in the undecided section in my closet, I would have to decide that they invoked special memories and represented my sartorial tastes at a particular time in my life. 

     Tomorrow, in Part Two (since this entry has turned into something much longer than I expected!), I’ll profile some of my choices. Who knows, maybe I will decide to lampoon the J. Peterman catalog (have you ever experienced it? I haven't had a hard copy one in years, but the site is just as delightful).

 *My husband and I have a long history of tongue-in-cheek justification of our expenses starting with his assertion that buying a PlayStation3 with BluRay was actually saving us money since we wouldn’t have to buy a BluRay separately. We are fully aware this financial reasoning doesn’t balance out.

Thinking about Gratitude

Yesterday, I watched the sweetest scene unfold in our living room. Christopher brought his ride-on rocket to Matt because the sounds were not working. A few days earlier, Matt had tried replacing the batteries, but it had not resolved the problem. Even though he was sure that the rocket was unfixable, Matt got out his tools and began disassembling the toy into many pieces with Christopher watching intently. As Matt worked, examining wires and the control panel, Christopher looked happily at his father and said “Thank you, Daddy. Thank you for helping me.” His voice was clear with true appreciation. Matt paused to look at me, and we shared a wonderful smile.

It has been so important to us to instill a sense of gratitude in Christopher. I am constantly thinking about the character traits and virtues that are important and how I can help Christopher to adopt them and understand their value. I would have to say that gratitude tops my list of important characteristics. I feel like it is a cornerstone of humanity, something that we can absolutely not survive successfully without. Cicero said “Gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all others” and Martin Luther called it “The basic Christian attitude.” To me, its lesson is all encompassing. Gratitude is not just something we feel, it is something we should act upon and demonstrate in our daily lives.

Unfortunately, in busy modern life, sometimes gratitude is pushed aside. All too often, it seems like the focus is on finding someone to blame rather than someone to thank. A criticism has become easier than a compliment. With strangers that we deal with day to day, it might seem more important to complain about bad circumstances than to give praise in situations that exceeded our expectations. With friends and family, who hasn’t delayed sending a handwritten card or making a phone call to thank someone for a gift or kind gesture?

Recently, I read about John Kralik’s book “365 Thank Yous”, a collection of daily thank you notes to individuals that have helped him in life. I haven’t read the book yet, but it instantly got me thinking about some of the people that would be recipients of my notes. Certainly my parents, who instilled the values and sparked the passions that have carried me through life. And undoubtedly Matt, for knowing the heart of me like no other person and providing leadership for our family. Then my thoughts turn to some of the people that I have minimal contact with, but enhance my life on a day to day basis. The waste collection driver that honks for Christopher every Monday as he picks up our garbage because he knows how excited Christopher is to see the big truck lift and dump the can. The man at the lab that gave me his place in line so that I could go through more quickly since Christopher was waiting with me. The airline agent that let my overweight luggage slide because she could see I was upset that I was leaving my mom for a year in Japan. These small acts have touched me, and enhanced the quality of my life.

In this season of Thanksgiving, it has been a delight to read some of the daily status updates of my friends that have taken the challenge of posting what they are thankful for each day. I think sometimes Thanksgiving gets swept aside in the rush to the holidays. Their daily posts have slowed that pace down and given me daily reminders in the ways that all of us are blessed.

I’m thankful that Christopher is beginning to understand gratitude, that he was able to thank his daddy and tell him why he was grateful. The scene gave a twinge to my heart because I thought his words were so sweet, but I knew that Matt’s attempts to fix the rocket would probably not work. In the end, it wasn’t the working rocket that mattered, it was Matt listening to Christopher and taking the time to look at the broken toy. The gratitude was in the act. “Thank you, Daddy. Thank you for helping me.”

I'm back!!

It's been forever since I posted on my blog. Every once in awhile, I feel an itch to commit some words to the keyboard, but I haven't managed to do it. Part of that is that I can't get over the hump of writing the first post in three years. However, recently I've feeling especially motivated because I've been catching up on the blogs of some of my friends. I know I'm biased, but their blogs have contained some of the most thought provoking and entertaining commentary I've read on the Internet in awhile. It's a fun dialogue they've got going and I'd like to join it. Plus, our family has a lot of new adventures heading our way. I need to get my rusty fingers in good working order, and now is as good time as any to start.