Clearing Out the Sweaters

All of my sweaters are on my bed in a heap because I’m rearranging my dresser drawers. This is a problem because my sweaters are all enormous, not because I am so much, but because I have a thing for big sweaters. So, storing them is a challenge. I also have wool wraps, dramatically huge woven things that I never wear but persist in keeping, thinking that maybe someday I will have just minutes to flee and won’t have time to put on a sweater.

My thinking about clothing is so out of whack.

I finally put in the Goodwill bag a beautiful men’s sweater that I bought because I liked how the collar turned up. The sweater is heavy, though, and, truth be told, makes me look like a man, so I never wear it although I look at the upturned collar fondly whenever I open that drawer.

What a ridiculous luxury to have all these sweaters.

I remember so many years ago, lying awake while my mourning sister slept, her dead husband’s sweaters arrayed by color on a set of open shelves on one wall of their bedroom. All the colors were pastels – yellow, pink, blue, and the haziest green. The sweaters were thin, almost gauzy, and I imagined that he’d worn them to play golf. I didn’t know that for sure, just conjectured. In my mind’s eye, I could see him wearing each sweater and then afterward, folding it carefully and putting it back on the shelf in its rightful place. They looked as if they had tissue paper protecting against creases and wrinkles. The sweaters were perfect, at least as I could see in the dim light of a half-moon.

No one would see my sweaters as perfect but any one of them could keep a body alive for a good while.