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.
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.
