pondhop: white jointed mannequin in glass door (Default)
Peg Duthie ([personal profile] pondhop) wrote2013-12-08 12:19 am
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"Did someone say that there would be an end..."

[Subject line from May Sarton's All Souls (1957)]

My mother would have been seventy years old today. When I was a very small girl, she used to wear this cloak:

Mom's cloak

Fun furry tassel

At some point, it was banished to the back or the bottom of my bedroom closet, perhaps for being too impractical or unfashionable. There may have been a matching skirt that I gave away when she died.

Memory plays tricks on us -- all these years, I'd misremembered the cloak as something she'd made (probably because she made a skirt and shawl set for me with similar fabric); I don't recognize the manufacturer, but it was probably something she purchased either in Taiwan or Minnesota.

Anyhow, I wore it the day before Thanksgiving, to a brunch with my in-laws, and finally admitted to myself that the cloak was too tight around my neck and the material too scratchy.

But it's just as well that I didn't have time to shlep it to Goodwill until three days ago, because I'd completely forgotten about it having a hood, which I unearthed early last week from a bin with other things I haven't yet revisited. Reuniting the hood with the cloak one last time -- slipping the little buttons through the thin little loops -- felt both right and awkward.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/70834.html.