IHAVE SCHEDULED A TOUR OF MY CLOSET for the next time Marion visits my tiny house. Apparently she has not seen it, though her post the other day about how different we are on this score of closets would lead you to infer otherwise. This is how it is between sisters, I think: We know them so well, and yet not at all, and that’s what makes the bond and also the friction that is the unique chemistry of siblings. I have just gone upstairs to take my closet’s measurements, to try to get this straight.
My little 1880’s house boasts just one clothing closet, a 48-inch-wide afterthought I managed to tuck into one of my impossibly small rooms a few years back. With two hanging racks installed in this mere shoebox, I have a total of 8 feet of space, period.
That doesn’t mean that, as Marion has told you with complete certainty because she really is sure of it the way only a sister can be, I have just the latest year’s wardrobe models hanging there—not an extra thing. Would that it were so.
Quite to the contrary, my tape measure reveals that I devote 2 of my precious 8 feet to a stretch of Brooks Brothers shirts I wore daily under suits more than 15 years ago when I worked at Newsday newspaper. Since then they have been in their plastic bags from the cleaners, who laundered them for me each week (hanger, not box, thanks). Why do I still have this space-hogging inventory of shirts I do not ever use? I have no idea whatsoever.
In the rest of the squeezebox that is my absurdly mini closet, more than 3 feet are likewise dedicated to clothes I don’t wear, ranging from “Would not be caught dead in but sentimental attachment involved” to “I’m too old for that cute outfit, but love remembering when I wasn’t.”
It’s hard to let go of the possibility of being young again, I say as the older sister, nearing 55. On little sister Marion’s end, I think she was saying this in her post on our comparative closets: It’s hard to let go of the image of your older sister not having it together, knowing the answers, having the secret.
And one more thing: The deluxe hand-me-downs she says she’s “on to me” about, and suspects I actually bought for her? They’re hand-me-downs. A size 6 or 8 throughout my 20s and 30s, by 40-something I shrunk. I know, it’s supposed to head in the other direction as women age, but I’m a 2 this last decade, apparently headed for old age as one of those women whose housedress she inhabits like a clanger in a bell.
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Brava! When I read Marion’s post I enviously thought, “Boy, Margaret is so organized, not dragging baggage with her.” So the Brooks Bros shirts made me grin. Unable to part with my stash of white cotton shirts accumulated over the years, I started wearing them to garden. Silly I know. But these days I also garden in linen dresses a little too worn to wear publicly but sooo comfy for tooling around the garden, pulling weeds and potting up small gems.
Oh boy do I get this! I’m the “big sister” also and my parents let me know daily that it was my job to set the example for the youngsters (all 4 of them) trailing behind me. I love that your closet is not perfect and you don’t have all the answers. Me neither!