Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-04-22 - 10:15

I am having this thing about clothes recently.

It's a combination of cleaning my mother's house, which always sends me home in a fevered state of Discard Everything Now, and the fact that my washer was broken, or it wasn't, depending on your point of view.

It was a new washer, which is another story. It was just installed, and its work was cut out for it, since we had been washerless for weeks. Dependent on the kindness (and Tide) of neighbors. Experiencing my first trip to the laundromat in over a decade. (Good magazines! Hey! People, US, and all those things I'm too snobbish to buy, you can read them in the laundromat!) But the new washer bogged down in the first week and quit spinning. Wet soapy clothes; back to the neighbors. I didn't get around to calling the repairman for days, and then I was looking at the washer thinking "I wonder..." and I loaded it up, and sure enough, it spun fine. So I'm thinking that perhaps it was just laying the ground rules for our relationship. You know, weekends off, paid holidays, that sort of thing.

But in the ensuing weeks of just-getting-by type laundry, we've amassed hampers and pillowcases and plastic baskets and mesh bags absolutely full of dirty clothes. Yet our closets and drawers are still full, and we have plenty of clean clothes to wear. Where does it all come from? Or, more to the point, where will it all go?

I like to buy clothes. I like to buy lots of them. I buy many secondhand, which keeps the habit affordable. The problem, besides storage, is that I don't seem to know the woman who does my shopping. I look in my closet, and I can see what she was thinking: "Yeah! I'll wear that, it will be like a Sergeant Pepper thing, it'll be cool!" "Oooh, dragons, yes, definitely, I need dragons." "I have to have this to go to a weekend retreat of West County Massage Therapists, if I ever decide to become a massage therapist." Who IS this woman, and who gave her my checkbook? Because the woman who lives in THIS house puts on clean jeans and a sweatshirt every day. Every single day. Navy, khaki, charcoal, black, wash day. Like that.

My overstuffed closet has one use. My best friend likes to shop there. She's always going someplace where I'm not going, and she knows where the good clothes are. I can outfit any occasion. We joke that if it weren't for her, my clothes would never get out. It's mostly true.

But about my mother's house. See, caring for your elderly parents is that terrifying glimpse of Where You're Headed. Or Where You're Headed If You Don't, which in my case is "don't stop acquiring useless things and start becoming a major Goodwill donor." I do donate to Goodwill. I take huge sacks of clothes to them, which is always amusing since I probably bought half of those clothes at Goodwill, so I get points for recycling, too. But it isn't enough. I'm still overflowing, and it's not showing any signs of letting up. I'm careening down the slippery slope of aging into eccentricity, and it scares me. I don't want to be Auntie Macassar. I want to be the Zen Gramma, with one perfect rice bowl and a woven mat. I don't even HAVE a rice bowl. Yet.

So I've worked the whole thing around in my head, and I can only think of one way to meet my shopping needs, my shopping tastes, and my Zen Gramma goals. I have to shop for someone else. Does anyone out there need a personal shopper? You should have lots of money. And like Sergeant Pepper. I can fix you right up. Just let me know.

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