Her Coat

Sometimes I catch myself subconsciously trying to live my mom's life.

Last month, our office complex was doing a coat drive to donate coats to the Nashville Rescue Mission. I passed by the box every day and thought to myself, I really ought to bring a coat in. I've got to have one I don't wear often enough to warrant keeping.

So one night, I deliberately took some time to sort through my jackets, sweaters, and coats. There was one pushed to the very back of my closet that I knew I never wore. It was older, but still warm and serviceable and also pretty stylish. The logical part of me knew that this was the coat to donate; the emotional part of me struggled.

It was the wool coat my mother had worn in her graduate school days, the one piece of clothing I'd retained and brought with me to Nashville when I moved away from home. I could see her in it, fresh-faced and beautiful in the photos of my parents' university days.

I took it out of my closet. I put it back.

A couple years ago when I had seriously considered going to graduate school, I'd been accepted to the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and had even been flown there by the school for a complimentary visit. My dad had told me all the places on campus to go see: the lab where he did his research, the dorm my mom lived in, the statue where he and she used to hang out. It was all still there, just like in the pictures. Standing there, I tried to imagine it all those years ago, my parents discovering young love.

Even though I eventually came to the conclusion that grad school was not the right path for me then, a piece of me romanticized the notion of walking those same paths my mom had walked with my hands tucked into the same coat she had worn and perhaps even meeting my own future husband.

This is what I thought of when I took the coat out of the closet again and slipped it on, looking at myself in the mirror, trying to see her.

I tucked my hands into the pockets and felt something inside. I brought my hands back out again, and I was holding my mom's brown, leather gloves. I remembered the years just after my mom had passed away, how I took great satisfaction in slipping my fingers into those gloves, noting how they fit perfectly and how my hands were the most like hers with our crooked pinkies. In a way, it was like holding her hand again.

I stood there for a while.

It was time to give up the coat for someone who needed it more, but first I carefully laid the brown, leather gloves on top of my set of drawers. Not everything had to go.