I’m coming up with a list of Good Things About Being Divorced, and this is Item Number One: twice the closet space.
It’s one of those things I didn’t think of when I was unhappily married and considering leaving. I thought about practical things like health insurance and mortgage payments. But closet space, so eminently practical? Twice as much of it? It never crossed my mind.
To date, it hasn’t really mattered all that much in my day to day life – after I removed his clothes and sent them to him, right after he left, I moved some things around so that the closet didn’t look so bare on one side, and that was it.
But with my sudden shoe-and-clothing windfall, I decide it’s time to purge. I spend an evening tearing through my closet. Gone are the worn-out sweaters, the clunky shoes, the socks I am sure I will find the mates to, eventually. I fill a large bag with trash, and a couple more with donations.
I get to that special drawer – the one full of silky things bought either with him, or with him in mind. I dump the contents into an anonymous trash bag. I cannot think of an occasion on which I would wear any of this again – something similar, certainly. But not this.
It’s not really the kind of stuff you donate, but it’s all perfectly good. I hate to just throw it away.
It occurs to me that perhaps the person for whom all this was bought would appreciate having it.
It’s a generous idea, when you think about it. It wasn’t on the list of things he asked for, and I’m giving it to him anyway.
I’m nice that way.
I put the bag into the garage with The Departed’s things, to be picked up by movers in just a few days.
A couple of days later, I buy a couple pairs of boxer shorts, run them through the wash and use them around the kitchen for a day or so. So they look, you know, not new. I toss them into the anonymous trash bag too, which helpfully labeled “personal effects.”
The Departed wears briefs. But you knew that.
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