Closet-Diving and Memories

Tonight, I went closet-diving. “Closet-diving” is when you go through your clothes to check the fit of older items you put away for “when I lose a few pounds.” A female acquaintance described it as something women do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if other men besides me kept some skinnier clothes from bygone days.

It started this morning when I put on my white guayabera shirt, one piece of a huge selection of clothes that a former coworker had given me after her husband lost a lot of weight and, ignorant of this fact, I had complained to her about the bareness of my wardrobe. (It was an incredibly generous gift; the total donation was easily worth $1,000 even in 2007.) A 3XL, I noticed with some amusement that the guayabera is now beginning to fit like a muumuu. Nevertheless, I wore it all day because guayaberas and tropical prints are good shirts to wear on a north-central Texas summer day, especially on “casual Friday.”

About an hour ago, after my brother had come home from dinner with his not-quite-ex-wife (I’ll leave you to wonder about that because I wonder, too), I mentioned the capacious Cuban shirt to him. “I’ll have to check out Goodwill,” I told him, “because this is the best of my tropical shirts. The rest are looking pretty ratty.”

“Hold on a moment,” Ted replied. He dived into his walk-in closet and found an ivory guayabera and a light-blue tropical print that hadn’t been taken out of the cleaner bags for some time. The tropical print was 2XL; it fits loose but good and is attractive as well.

The guayabera is a large. Not extra-large … merely large. And it fits. Not even a slight bit of strain at the button over my belly. That’s what prompted the closet-dive.

About a week ago, I found a pair of black pants that I wore when I worked for Arby’s in 1999-2001. Tonight, I also found a black guayabera that had come with the rest of the clothes but was too small for me until now. I found a red poplin shirt that Ted had bought in Mumbai for me—the Indians’ concept of 3XL is smaller than ours. I found a slightly nicotine-stained white sateen shirt, as well as a chef’s tunic that Ted and his first wife Annette had given me as a gag gift.

And I found a two-piece suit.

Flashback to July 1, 2002: Two nights before, I had gotten a call from my late younger brother that my father had passed away. Bob and I were leaving the next day for Albuquerque for the funeral. At the time, I was driving a cab and hadn’t had a suit that fit for several years. Larry, one of my best friends, dug into his own money to make sure I not only had a suit but also a shirt and tie to go with it.

Since I was no longer walking or working the way I used to in fast food, I was already on my way to morbid obesity. Before I left Omaha in June 2006 to move to Texas, I had already outgrown that suit. And I have no idea why I hung onto it, except that it was the only suit I had, I had worn it only two or three times, and it was a gift from a dear friend. Since then, it has gathered dust and nicotine hanging in my closet. It needs to be cleaned.

But it fits. I now have a nice suit I can wear in formal and professional situations. The shirt that came with it, too, though I need to replace the tie. And it’s charcoal gray, so just about anything goes with it—I have quite a few shirts that are, shall we say, boldly colored.

And I have a number of very well-maintained pants to donate to a charity so some other person can benefit from my former coworker’s generosity. For that is the memory that humbles me most—I have been the recipient of numerous acts of kindness, generosity, even magnanimity. I should be more grateful than I have been. The “scarcity mindset” is too worried about future famine to be grateful for present bounty. I hope I can be more grateful in the future.