Clearing the Closet
by Eric Dobbs
copyright 1996

I live in an inner city apartment in an old building. There are few closets. One of my four rooms is reserved for my daughter, who visits with me on alternate weekends. Because she stores little of her clothing here, the closet in that room has been the catch-all for all sorts of clothing. It finally became too full and had to be cleared out. The experience was interesting and took much more time than I had expected. Clothes, even other people's clothes, have memories attached to them, and I can tell you that closet cleaning requires that one be armed with two things: a box of Kleenex and a pair of heavy duty work gloves. You will soon understand why.
I had once heard or read someone else's reminiscence of closet clearing, but had forgotten about it until I cleared my own closet of the accumulation of many years. Three garments had particular significance. The first was the first "pretty dress" that I had bought for my daughter when she was three. Along with this dress, there were other leftovers from her early childhood, but this one had special significance. It had been the focus of several psycho-dramas. The first was in the store where we bought it. She was to have her picture taken at daycare the next morning. In effect, this was to be her first school picture, and her mother had not packed an outfit I considered suitable for so important an occasion. I took her to a children's clothing store to buy her a dress.
After much rummaging through the store's rather large selection, she settled on a pretty little dress with a pink sash and a floral print. We went to the dressing room to try it on. After determining that it fit her, I told her to change back into her regular clothes. She refused. I explained that she could wear the dress the next day when she was to have her photograph taken, and that she should take it off now so it would be clean the next day. She refused. I suppose I should have realized that having her photograph taken was nothing special to her. I am a photographer and took her picture all the time. There was no way I could explain to her that there was anything particularly different about the photograph to be taken at daycare. The more she refused, the more I became determined to prevail. She cried and screamed when I attempted to loosen the buttons on the back of the tiny dress. I tried reason again. No luck. Finally, she won. She made such a fuss and such a scene that I was embarrassed into letting her wear the dress home.
After that, she wanted to wear the dress whenever she was with me, and we had many confrontations over her demands to wear it day after day. The odd thing was that she never got it dirty.  She never spilled anything on it, nor did she damage it while wearing it. As I was deciding whether to include the dress in the jumble of things for charity, I thought back to those fusses and regretted the time that was lost and the tears that were shed over something so trivial. Of all her things from that age, this is the one thing I resolved to keep. It was a reminder to consider what I am really worried about when putting my foot down. The fact is that in those days I was worried lest someone should think I did not provide her with sufficient clean clothes. I was not so worried about whether she was happy.
Among the other things in the closet were many of  my late father's clothes, mostly suits and sport coats. When he died of cancer, he had been made a pauper, and all he left was a box of mementos and his clothes. My father had nice clothing, and even though he was taller than me, many of his things fit me. When I cleared out his house, I bundled the suits and jackets into the spare closet. Many of them were in plastic garment bags. One Saturday morning, I was to attend a friend's wedding in Williamsburg. It was a very warm morning in May, and when I took out my only blazer suitable for the weather, I was chagrined to see that I had not had it cleaned since the last wedding, when I had adorned its sleeve with crab dip. Gravity is my nemesis and occasionally reminds me not to take up such pastimes as hang-gliding or rock climbing by depositing a liberal dollop of some gorgeous sauce on my ceremonial clothing. I was desperate, because, in addition to being a guest, I was to be the official photographer for the event. Although it was to be a small, private wedding, I knew that the families involved set some store by proper attire. Shirtsleeves would not do.
Suddenly, I remembered Pop's jackets. One of these was a bottle green blazer similar to those worn above khaki trousers by prosperous Richmond doctors. Yanking it from its plastic bag and hastily examining it for cigarette burn holes, I tried it on. It fit. I took it off, threw it over my arm and rushed out the door with my camera bag on my shoulder. Arriving in Williamsburg, I dashed into the Inn and hurried to the room where the wedding and reception were to take place. I had donned the jacket at the door. I had arrived in plenty of time and circulated among my friends and their families. I received a couple of compliments on the jacket. I took a few pictures, and then the ceremony began. There were more people in the room than the air conditioning could handle, and I began to feel uncomfortably warm. It was then that I became painfully aware of the jacket. It was not only that it was too warm; it smelled of my father. He smoked cigars, and that aroma was the first to reach my nose, but the odor of tobacco was blended with the Old Spice aftershave that had penetrated the lapels over the years along with the individual scent of my father that I remembered from childhood when I jumped into his arms when he came home from work.
The brains of very simple chordates are really just elaborations of the olfactory organs at the head end of the nerve cord. Somewhere I had read that this kind of primitive organ is called a rhinencephalon...a nose-brain. Some scientists say that the proximity of the olfactory centers to this very basic part of the brain, where our memories and emotions are created and closely linked, explains why smells can evoke the most vivid memories. In my case, Proust's madeleine pastry had been replaced by Antonio y Cleopatra Panatelas and Old Spice. On the instant my father's ghost hovered around me. Suddenly I was in mind of the series of dreams I had had several months after his death, in which he had somehow finagled his way out of being dead. My father had charmed his way out of numerous scrapes in life, and I could easily see him persuading the fates to reconnect his thread, and return him to telling again the same old jokes I had heard for decades. When I was younger, I would always roll my eyes when the initial line of one of these jokes would emanate from his lips. As I grew older, I began to be comforted by their familiarity. They became like the pledge of allegiance or the Nicene Creed; something that never changed. At any moment, wrapped as I was in his coat and his essential aromas, I expected to hear his voice intone one of the punchlines, "So tell me, how do you start a flood?" Or, "So you're the Devil! Ya don't scare me; I'm married to your sister."
I did not want to be the first to remove my jacket. Despite the heat, all the men in the room kept theirs on. There was nothing for it but to wear the jacket and have my dead father follow me around the room while I took pictures. As soon as I was out the door, I threw the jacket in the back seat of the car and drove all the way back to Richmond with the windows open, even though I would much rather have used the air conditioner. I gave away all his clothes, except for his navy blue cashmere overcoat. I dry-cleaned it twice.
The last article of clothing was one of my own. It was, and I take a deep breath before typing this, a leisure suit. There it was. A relic of that long national lapse of taste known as the Seventies. I did not actually buy it myself. My mother called me up one day and asked if I would like one. Well, I have to confess that I thought in those days that the basic idea of the leisure suit was a good one. I thought it was a step toward getting rid of that most uncomfortable of unnecessary garments, the necktie. Not thinking much about the prospect of actually wearing it, I said okay. A few days later it arrived by UPS. I opened the box and found this polyester creation complete with its slippery, polychrome shirt. The suit was green. But it was a triumph of modern textile science in that it was a green not found in nature. You could search the rain forest or the coral reef high and low, and you would never find any plant or animal of quite the same hue. It looked as if it might be slightly radioactive, like Fiestaware. The Amazon could yield no toxic salamander or foot-long cockroach to match this suit. This was the kind of color nature bestows upon some creatures as a warning to others: Don't eat me! I taste awful. I'm poisonous. I have a sting that will make your brain turn to Waldorf salad. Touch me and I'll explode! I smell really bad!
I took the suit and the slippery shirt out of the box and hung them in the closet. A few days later my mother called. "Did you get the suit?" "Yes!! Thanks a lot!!"  "Have you worn it yet?" "Well, no. There hasn't been a suitable occasion." "Well, wear it to the next party you go to." "Good Idea!"
This conversation, or variations on it, occurred several times in the next few weeks. Finally, I was to attend a theatre party organized by the trade association of the Savings and Loan business I worked for. (This was in the days when they made money.)  I decided that I would wear the leisure suit to this event. I had seen my immediate superior wear one. I respected him and felt he looked okay in the thing. If he could wear one, I could wear one this once so I could tell my mother I had worn her gift. I thought the theatre had been bought out for the evening by the group, but it had not. The group had only about a third of the seats. The rest were occupied, it seemed, by everyone else I knew, respected, and whose esteem I valued. They all looked at me with the most curious expressions. They seemed to be saying, "who are you, and what have you done with Eric Dobbs?" Their eyes dropped to the slippery shirt with its long collar points and open neck; to the jacket whose color gave new meaning to the word "artificial." I was embarrassed.
Now, there is embarrassment and there is profound embarrassment. Profound embarrassment is what you feel years later about something that makes you still want to crawl into the earth just as badly as it did when the event actually happened. This is one wound that time does not heal. That night I took off the suit and slippery shirt and put them in the back of the closet. I never wore them again. But I kept the suit, because I can't bring myself to throw away clothes.  Years went by and the thing was still in my closet. I was discussing plans for a yard sale with a female friend of mine, and I wondered out loud if anyone would buy a leisure suit. She looked at me wide-eyed and said, "do you have one?" "Yes," I said, and I told her the story of the theatre party, a thing I had never done in the years preceding that day. She laughed and blushed for me, but when I finished I noticed her eyes brimming with tears. She said, "This proves to me that you are a very good person. Anyone who would do that for his mother is a saint." I was pleased that the ordeal had at least won this approval, but I still wanted to crawl into the earth. I did not include the suit in the yard sale.
Upon cleaning out the closet, I buried the leisure suit deep within my father's gray and blue suits and jackets. I didn't want the people at the Salvation Army to spot it when I brought in the bundle. Twenty years had passed, and the leisure suit still inspired a shame and furtiveness undiminished by time. By now you know why you should bring a box of Kleenex to closet clearing, and you may have surmised the need for the heavy gloves: clawing your way barehanded through the floorboards and into the earth is rough work.

Y'all

What follows was on my old blog for a long time, and I have occasion now to need others to have access to it.


Y’all

Contemporary English lacks a second person plural pronoun distinct in form from the singular. People of good breeding and those who would not be misunderstood feel the need of such a pronoun and substitute “y’all” or some alternative form. The purpose of using this form is to avoid confusion as to who is being addressed or about whom inquiries are made.

Primarily American Southerners and African Americans of all regions use “y’all,” which is a contraction of “you all.” No educated user of this form uses it when addressing an individual, unless that individual is viewed by the speaker as a representative of some collective, such as a family, an organization or other group. An exception to this rule is that some Southerners may use the form to charm or gull individual Yankees.

Two Southern businessmen meet at the corner of Lee and Washington Streets. They are well acquainted, but they have not seen each other in some weeks. No one else is present. Mr. Beauregard says to Mr. Early, “Well, Jubal! How are y’all doing? To which Mr. Early responds, “Just fine, thank you, Fairfax, except that Melanie had a touch of the vapors the other day. I’m doing all right, I reckon. How are y’all?” To which Mr. Beauregard answers, “Just fine also, but, of course, Old Jimmy just ain’t what he used to be. Last month I shot a duck at Mobjack, and it took him five minutes to find that bird and bring him back. Traffic at the store has picked up lately, though. Thanks for asking. Sorry to hear about Melanie. Is she all right now?”

A Northern visitor might have been mystified by these words, even without the use of the pronoun “y’all.” In both cases, when the men used the form, each was asking the other not only about his own well-being and pursuits, but about those of his family, his business, and his domestic animals. Upon which each reported as he saw fit. Mr. Early’s wife has had a “sinking spell,” that she describes politely as “the vapors,” which Mr. Early duly quotes, even though he thinks it is a silly expression. Mr. Beauregard comments on the declining gifts of his Labrador retriever, who is named after the male Atlantic blue crab. He reports on the rising fortunes of his business and then politely asks after the health of Mrs. Early. Each understood exactly what was meant by the use of “y’all” in these circumstances. If Mr. Beauregard had been acquainted only with Mr. Early as an individual, he would certainly have asked, “how are you?”

Contemporary English is the only major European language that lacks a pronoun specifically for the second person plural. “You” is the “standard” form for both the second person singular and the second person plural. Other languages, such as Spanish, German, French, and Russian, to name only a few, also have a polite form of address used when speaking to persons with whom the speaker is not well acquainted. In addition, most of these languages have distinct familiar forms for the second person singular and plural. For example, in German, a person one does not know well is addressed as Sie (pronounced “Zee”). One’s children, close relatives, pets, close friends, social inferiors and equals, and God are addressed individually as “du.” This is cognate (has the same origin) with English “thou.” When addressing two or more persons with whom one is familiar “ihr” (pronounced “ear”) is used. In early Modern English the equivalent second person plural pronoun was “ye,” as in “hear ye! Hear ye!” Historians of the English language are still debating the causes of the decline of these forms. A major cause is assumed to be the linguistic confusion that followed the Norman Conquest of England. The new Norman overlords spoke their form of French, and their English peasants were speaking their Germanic language, which is now called Anglo-Saxon or Old English. For two or three centuries there were many opportunities for misunderstanding between the peasants and their masters. Things were further shaken up by the great Black Death in the middle of the Fourteenth Century, which wiped out at least a third of the population of Britain. Formerly landless people such as merchants and some peasants found themselves in a position to trade labor for land. These newly landed people naturally aspired to the perquisites of the gentry. Those still without land were thus confused as to how to address whomever they met. To avoid offending someone who looked like a peasant but was now gentry, a wise peasant might simply use what he knew to be the polite form of address, that is, “you.”

This solution to a social problem led to another. Now there was confusion as to whether one was addressing or inquiring about one person or more than one. In time, various populations have solved this problem with new forms to stand for the old ones. In the American South, where properly polite behavior has always been prized, saying “you all” when the plural was meant cleared up the matter. This phrase was quickly shortened to “y’all,” although many Southerners will still say “you all” on occasion. In southeastern Pennsylvania, “you’ns,” pronounced “you’uns” is heard. This is a contraction of the rather less elegant “you ones.” And, of course, in parts of the northeastern United States, using the even more barbarous sounding “youse” (pronounced “yooz”) or “youse guys” avoids misunderstanding of singular and plural, particularly within subcultures where offense can have unpleasant consequences, such as the appearance of a dead fish on one’s doorstep.

Eric Dobbs, ©2004

Aaaaaannnd we're back!

I had ignored my blog for quite a while, but it came to my attention that the software I was using for it was subject to malware attack, and that is exactly what had happened. So, I deleted it and have started over on Blogger. I am afraid I was not a very good blogger in the sense of updating regularly. My blog was really just a sort of scriptorium where I kept miscellaneous writings to which I had devoted a fair amount of effort. I gather the idea of blogging is to be somewhat more spontaneous. The old content will probably turn up here eventually, but in the meantime, I will try to get more into the blogging spirit.