The Fabrics and Patterns of Our Lives

So there I was the other night, getting ready for bed and rubbing my feet with Bath & Body Works Black Amethyst body cream, when I thought:

I wonder what ever happened to that ribbed beige top?

It wasn’t a special top; I got it at some outlet center for maybe $5. It was a winter shirt, long sleeved, the casual kind that you wear at home or maybe out to the store. I’m not sure how long ago I got rid of it; maybe a couple of years. And I have no idea what made me think about it.

For someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy shopping, I form strong attachments to some articles of clothing. There was the tan dress with green and red spots I loved in kindergarten, known in my family as “Melanie’s split pea soup dress.” In fifth grade, there was the pink short-sleeved top in a style they called a “poor boy”–I have no recollection why–and pink floral patterned A-line skirt I got for Easter (smashing with a pink pillbox hat with fake flowers). In high school, I made most of my clothes, and was particularly fond of a black-and-floral-print dress. In college, I wore a tan, red, and blue sweater from JC Penney’s to shreds. Then, the summer before I graduated, there was the blue-print sleeveless dress with a smocked waist that I bought for ten dollars at a “crazy days” sale. Thirty years later, I still sometimes regret getting rid of that one.

I learned from that regret, and so I’m holding on to a black print, short-sleeved dress that ties in the back and buttons down the front. It’s eight years old, and the buttonholes at the bottom are stretched out enough that when I wear it, I’m constantly rebuttoning it. Its days of service may be done, but this one, I’m not putting in the giveaway pile. Too many memories, happy and sad, of a special spring and summer and a love gone by.

No wonder, then, that my favorite passage in Louisa May Alcott’s An Old-Fashioned Girl comes when Polly, our working-class heroine, and Fanny, her once-rich-now-poor friend, sit down to figure out how to make over Fanny’s former finery into a usable spring wardrobe.  When Fanny lingers over a gauzy dress, one of her favorites, Polly responds:

“You wore that thoroughly out, and it’s only fit for the rag-bag. Yes, it was very pretty and becoming, I remember, but its day is over.”

Fanny let the dress lie in her lap a minute, as she absently picked at the fringe, smiling to herself over the happy time when she wore it last, and Sydney said she only needed cowslips in her lap to look like spring. Presently she folded it up, and put it away with a sigh; but it never went into the rag-bag, and my sentimental readers can understand what saved it.

Here’s to the clothes that represent memorable moments.