Like millions of others I have read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, thrown away garbage bags full of crap inspired by the question, what sparks joy?
Sparking joy is a concept every woman understands. I asked my husband if any of his clothing sparks joy.
“What are you talking about?”
“Do any of your shirts spark joy? How about your collection of crew jackets?”
“Let’s not exaggerate, Marcus.”
“So let’s throw them out, you never wear them. They’re not sparking joy!”
“They’re collectors items!”
We left it at that.
The tidying maven tells us when you clean out your closets you will have an encounter with the real you. Myself, I had a memory. I was eleven. And I wanted a certain fake fur coat.
One didn’t see an awful lot of polyester fake fur then. Children wore wool car coats, or wool knee length coats with brass buttons. I had a navy blue double breasted wool coat lined in plaid that would probably spark joy in me today, but back then, it was just another dull, dutiful coat, acquired at my rich Uncle Earl’s clothing store in Oklahoma City where we got things free because my father, his baby brother died, and we were the poor relations.
This white fake fur coat began to appear in the schoolyard of South Highlands Elementary School. I saw one of them, two of them, up to half a dozen of them. This coat was the coat of the moment. It fell below the butt; it zipped up the front and had a pointed hood. It was bordered around all the seams with this fabulous piping. My friend Ruthie possessed one. My friend Kay possessed one. Her father was one of the partners of the department store that had the snazzier clothes than the one my father left behind when he died and where I got my clothes. And it was there at Selber Brothers, I discovered on a scouting mission one afternoon when I took the trolley downtown after school, a whole big rack of them. The coat cost $39.99. And was, I knew, four dollars and ninety nine cents more than my mother’s housekeeper Aline made in a whole week, moping floors, cooking dinner, waiting on us at the table and so forth.
But I wanted this coat that was as far away as the moon. I believed this coat would change my fortunes on the playground. I believed this coat would make me popular. Prettier. Less prone to insult and getting beaten up by the stray bigoted child who would call me a lover of dark skinned people or a Jew and stuff pine straw down my throat. And whom I would never rat out for fear of reprisal.
I might have had a dollar in change in my piggy bank. I knew better than to ask my Grandmother who would just offer to make me a coat. One simply did not ask my mother for anything. It was like the Ten Commandments.
Thou shalt not ask thy mother for anything. Mother was tired. Mother was sick, had to work, hated to work…
Nevertheless, I did end up asking her for the coat. She turned me down. Once, twice. She shut the door of her bedroom in my face. She sent me to my room. She told me she couldn’t afford it. She cried and made me feel guilty. But I still kept asking her for the coat. I had to. I was begging for my life. The life I wanted anyway.
Miraculously, I got her to buy the coat.
I remember when she gave in, when we walked over to Selber Brothers to get the coat. And I put it on. I was filled with the great desire to show myself to the world. I was eleven years old and I had this wonderful white coat. I put the hood up, I probably danced around.
My mother looked at me in the coat and said, “It’s not right, it doesn’t look good, you talked me into it, I can’t afford it.” And probably lit a cigarette and blew smoke on it.
If she didn’t exactly make me hate my beautiful coat, the first and last thing I ever asked of her, my punishment was, that the coat changed nothing. It was myself I hated even more. Still I wore it, I wore it till it turned grey and fell apart and then one day it disappeared. And I went back to wearing wool car coats with toggle buttons.
Clothing contains our body and our body contains our desires. Perhaps that’s why women romanticize–often make a fetish of–our clothing because it is a way to contain our deep desires. Or a way to wear them in plain sight disguised as something else.
To this day, asking for anything I want fills me with dread and often guilt. I want to be like Mother Theresa who only needed the worn nun’s habit and her spectacles, or was that some other martyr?
Be careful when you clean out your closet. Be careful what you wish for.
But be even more careful what you insist on. It will haunt you all the days of your life, and if you have the misfortune of actually possessing the object of your desire, someone will make you feel guilty for your desire and take all its pleasure away.
Tidying my closet, I accidentally threw out the only pair of sweat pants that has ever sparked anything close to joy when I wore them, and cut the hell out of my hand on a wire hanger. My friend Susan says housework is dangerous. I agree. So, be careful if you read that book too.
by 
