I wanted to clean out my closet

Organized Living was having a sale on wooden hangers, buy 3, get 3 free. So of course I needed them, 60 of them. My closet needed them. All my clothes would be lined up neatly, from red to orange to green and blue, with black and white at each end, hanging on beautiful wooden hangers instead of the snaggy plastic ones. I marched out of the store with steely reserve: today is the day I will actually do it. I will clean my closet.

At home again I pulled open the closet doors, matching their squeak with a groan, “What am I doing on a nice day like today, inside cleaning my closet?”

”It’s not something you can put off any more,” I heard my mother’s voice nagging me inside my head. So I wheedled to myself, “Besides, you might find something you’ve been looking for!”
I pulled everything from the floor of the closet out into the room. What was that Pilates thigh-squeezing appliance doing there? I’d been looking for it since my birthday. Next to it was my beach bag, which spilled some sand onto the floor. My old bathing suit was inside smelling like seaweed and suntan lotion. Aha – and there were the clothes I bought on sale for when I was going to lose those 15 pounds. I unhooked the hangers from the rod, an armload of stiff old starched shirts, scratchy woolen sweaters, that silk tank top with a thin plastic cover from when I actually took my clothes to the cleaners. These I tossed on the bed. I had to sit down and take stock of the situation.

As I looked up into the closet, I noticed some boxes on the top shelf. I needed the ladder to reach them. The ladder was in the garage with the new hangers, so I went out to get them. What a fantastic day for a walk, I thought, as I looked around outside. The new flowers I’d planted needed watering, but such a nice day. The ladder was way in the corner of the garage, behind my bicycle. I’d had the bike tuned up last weekend, but hadn’t had a chance to ride it yet. “Just a spin around the block – you deserve it, having spent all week in that cave of a cubicle,” I told myself. So I wheeled it out and down the driveway. My neighbor Jack was in his front yard, so I stopped to chat. “Wait a minute,” I heard the scolding voice in my head say, “what are you thinking? Get back in that house and clean out your closet this instant.”

Again in the bedroom, I set the ladder up, climbed it and pulled down an old box that was tied with an old wrinkled red ribbon. My fingers felt the dust on the top and my nose reacted. I placed the box on the bed, pushing the clothes aside. The masking tape label read, “round doilies, etc.” in my mother’s handwriting. I couldn’t remember seeing this box before, but it must have been there for at least 3 years, since she’d died in 2002. I pulled the ribbon off the box and opened it. It smelled faintly of my parents’ hall closet, and again, quite dusty. Inside was a faded green tablecloth and some yellowed potholders wrapped in crinkled white tissue. Some of the cloths had appliqués and embroidery, hand crochet and cutwork.

I seemed to remember a long-ago family gathering, the green cloth not so faded as it is now. Then came a scene from my grandmother’s kitchen, complete with a fragrant angel food cake just out of the oven, and those potholders hanging in a neat line on hooks.

I spent the rest of the afternoon looking through the pieces, wondering where they’d come from, who made them and when. It was dark outside when I finished putting the old things away. I put the box back on the shelf, and the hangers back on the rod. I think the closet can wait for another day.