Holding on to the Clothes I Love

I’m wearing my favorite old T-shirt today. Although it’s dark navy, it’s comfortable in our current humid and hot North Carolina summer. A picture of Louis Sullivan, a Chicago architect, sits across my chest and under his picture is a script: Form Follows Function. I love the material. It’s gauzy but not too light. It’s 50% cotton and 50% polyester and Made in the USA (Clute, Texas). I don’t know how old this shirt is. I have had it since the 80s when I volunteered for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Oak Park, Illinois. Sullivan was a mentor to Frank. I learned a lot about architecture—so different from nursing. I would take my young daughter to the various FLW open houses. Wright designed the most homes in Oak Park. My daughter became an architect.

I have a purple sweatshirt that I bought before I had kids. My baby girl architect is going to be 54 in September. I have no recollection where I bought it and why I bought it in a large size. It reaches just below my knees and became my favorite bathing suit cover up. I resurrected it from the back of my closet some years ago and now it keeps me warm on balmy autumn evenings. It’s so ratty looking that I only wear it at home. Each time I put it on, I am young and skinny walking barefoot along the ocean’s edge on a summer beach at the Jersey Shore. When I try to include it with other stuff to be recycled, it sticks to my palm and winds its way back to my closet.  

The coat I had worn for years, a black, zippered hooded number with a thin lining never had an option for the recycle heap. It disintegrated before I thought to part with it. I probably had the coat a little over ten years. It wasn’t a heavy coat, and was perfectly suited to our mild winters. Thinking it was waterproof, I brought it with me when we went to Costa Rica in 2015. After I wore it on my first, and last, white water rafting trip, the coat and I dripped water as we walked through the forest back to the lodge. It took three days to dry out.

I loved this coat: comfortable and practical. This past winter, as I sat next to my husband while we waited for his cardiology appointment, I noticed what looked like flakes of dandruff on my shoulders. Not only on my shoulders, but the flakes dotted the floor around my chair. I lifted the coat that I had folded on my lap and found dried breadcrumbs replaced the lining. I rolled it up so the crumbs wouldn’t continue to fall as we headed to the exam room. I had no choice but to toss it in the garbage.

I’m not a hoarder, but as I grow older, I find that the memories I attach to some of my clothing, seep deeply into their threads—impossible to dislodge. 

Now I still have the dress I wore to my daughter’s wedding.