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[Subject line from May Sarton's All Souls (1957)]
My mother would have been seventy years old today. When I was a very small girl, she used to wear this cloak:
At some point, it was banished to the back or the bottom of my bedroom closet, perhaps for being too impractical or unfashionable. There may have been a matching skirt that I gave away when she died.
Memory plays tricks on us -- all these years, I'd misremembered the cloak as something she'd made (probably because she made a skirt and shawl set for me with similar fabric); I don't recognize the manufacturer, but it was probably something she purchased either in Taiwan or Minnesota.
Anyhow, I wore it the day before Thanksgiving, to a brunch with my in-laws, and finally admitted to myself that the cloak was too tight around my neck and the material too scratchy.
But it's just as well that I didn't have time to shlep it to Goodwill until three days ago, because I'd completely forgotten about it having a hood, which I unearthed early last week from a bin with other things I haven't yet revisited. Reuniting the hood with the cloak one last time -- slipping the little buttons through the thin little loops -- felt both right and awkward.
My mother would have been seventy years old today. When I was a very small girl, she used to wear this cloak:
At some point, it was banished to the back or the bottom of my bedroom closet, perhaps for being too impractical or unfashionable. There may have been a matching skirt that I gave away when she died.
Memory plays tricks on us -- all these years, I'd misremembered the cloak as something she'd made (probably because she made a skirt and shawl set for me with similar fabric); I don't recognize the manufacturer, but it was probably something she purchased either in Taiwan or Minnesota.
Anyhow, I wore it the day before Thanksgiving, to a brunch with my in-laws, and finally admitted to myself that the cloak was too tight around my neck and the material too scratchy.
But it's just as well that I didn't have time to shlep it to Goodwill until three days ago, because I'd completely forgotten about it having a hood, which I unearthed early last week from a bin with other things I haven't yet revisited. Reuniting the hood with the cloak one last time -- slipping the little buttons through the thin little loops -- felt both right and awkward.
