From my closet to yours and back again

I look now at those things she recently gave to me and I remember they were mine at the beginning.

That’s the way it is with cupboards. Things get put in there and stay in there for too long. The day after you get rid of them of course, is the day you want them. And by wanting, I am talking about a burning need with a bright vision for their use when nothing else will do.

I console myself at those moments that in getting rid of that one thing and one thing that I haven’t thought of for perhaps a decade, that there were 99 other things also purged that I have immediately forgotten about.

But I digress. Because this is not about the perennial cupboard clean out and that mystery of how things remain despite our annual obliteration of all things superfluous. This is about the dance that happens before Lifeline or the recycle shop. I call this: doing the closet tango.

Having returned home from Germany recently, my daughter culled those material things that represented in material form her life to date. In so doing, she sold a few things at bargain prices to delighted people, she filled a Salvation Army bin (she really did) and she gave things away.  Many things were given to me.

Mine is the task therefore of using up the lotions and the shampoos, paring the unfinished and the unused. I scored a few items of clothing, boosting my scarves and wraps in particular. I did notice her whisk away a few favourites, wishing I had realised her red coat and fabulous floaty black dress had been sitting in her cupboard for the past few years. She tells me I could have worn anything of hers, but I never once looked.

But as I handle these new things, fresh from her cupboard to mine, I realise that there are a few of them originally sent the other way. Some things have simply been returned. I quite like the things she has given me, partly because they carry with them a memory of her.

And with no one new to give them to, I am gradually wearing those scarves and emptying those bottles.

But perhaps I should have used them initially and saved myself this closet dance.

- Linda Muller