THE JOY OF OLD CLOTHES
Old clothes are like old friends: they let me feel like myself. No other navy blue hat frames my face as this one does, so I’ll stick with it despite the stray threads. My scarf has pilled, but the colors make music with the most beloved pieces in my closet. Like this down coat from Italy, found on a sale rack several moves and many years ago. I can always count on mauve to brighten a dour winter day.
There’s no confusing my coat with anyone else’s, a hazard when cloak rooms burst with sober black and navy. When I too wore a winter coat dark as the night, I once got home from the Y with someone else’s car keys jingling in a pocket. She was taller than I am, and at least a size larger. Her hem flapped around my ankles. But with my head full of deadlines and what to cook for dinner, I hadn’t even noticed. Dinner was late that night. Unless I made it back to the Y, a walk and a subway ride away, this woman would be stranded there at rush hour.
The mauve coat used to have a metal zipper like the one in a kid’s snowsuit — its only unlovable feature. This year I finally wearied of aligning the ends just so, which rarely happened before the third attempt (had I become my own toddler?). My dry cleaner promised to replace the loathed zipper with a pink one to complement the coat (and the scarf, come to think of it). A few days later, he left me a voicemail in a European accent I couldn’t place. He’d found a glove in one of the pockets and would clean it at no extra charge.
A glove. Where was the mate? Does a winter go by without at least one lost glove? Scouring every shelf in the closet for a lone black leather glove, I could picture its fate: dropped and trampled underfoot on the morning dog walk. I am not my sharpest while unrolling a poop bag with frozen fingers. The cleaner had just done me a useless favor, and I didn’t have the heart to let him know.
I needn’t have worried. My coat looks prettier than ever with its new pink zipper and not one but two immaculate gloves. In the cleaner’s language, “glove” means “pair of gloves.” Which language is that, you must be thinking. Damn, I forgot to ask. But the question will keep. Market Cleaners on The Esplanade has made a friend for life.
