Closet Cleaning

I’m never going to wear khaki pants again.

The last time I wore them was about four years ago. I was in a meeting and happened to look down at my lap where the red of my top fell over the tan of my khaki pants. “When I leave here, I can go right to my shift at Target,” I wrote on my meeting neighbor’s agenda, thinking it was the funniest thing ever. ‘Oh ha,’ was the response as in ‘maybe you could leave a little early so as not to be late.’

So I think of that little episode whenever I see my khaki pants. I’ve kept them because I am loathe to get rid of clothes and because I think that somehow, with the right shirt, I could look extremely cute in khaki pants.

But today when I pulled them out of my jammed closet along with a dozen pair of size 10 pants which I bought and wore in a two-week period several years ago when I dropped a lot of weight because I quit drinking, I decided I am done with magical thinking about these awful khaki pants.

So I sent the khaki pants to Goodwill. I also sent a purple print shirt that I have tried to like but which is repelling in some truly fundamental way. And a complicated cape-sweater that I wore once to get a headshot taken and it looked terrific but since then it always looks like a large dish towel wrapped around my shoulders. And so I had to face the cruel truth: this sweater was lovely once but it became hideous somehow. We will never know why.

I threw out little suede boots that my daughter in California sent me years ago to match a pair she wore. There is more of a story to it than that but too hard to tell. Anyway, I have loved those super soft buckskin boots and their little cord shoelaces. They have big thick soles so I often tripped when I wore them, which I don’t much anymore, because I am 30 seconds away from a nursing home anyway what with my advancing age and crummy balance. So I put them in the wastebasket; it felt sickening to do that considering who sent them but I remembered that she long ago ditched her matching pair. I need to have a firmer core.

I also threw away a dozen belts. Coiled them up and put them in the wastebasket. I’m surprised they didn’t crack and turn to dust in my hands, it’s been that long since I’ve worn a belt. Lord. The whole idea is dreadful. Why would I do more to cinch myself up? Isn’t buttoning my jeans sufficient?

In the back of the closet, behind a stiff white dress shirt and a Harley Davidson emblemed flannel shirt someone gave me years ago, hangs my mother’s handmade purple velvet wedding dress with the seams she stitched herself by hand. She made it in 1937. She had just turned 20. I gave it a touch but didn’t take it out. Doing that would make me wonder what I should do with it, not that I would ever get rid of it or send it to Goodwill. But at some point, someone will go in my closet and go through my things. There won’t be any khaki pants hanging there or belts. But that dress will be there, on a hanger, in the back, a decision for someone else to make.

I think about things like that a lot more than I used to.