Why I kept it

On my desk right now there is a draft of an essay, a stack of journals, a few bills, a sushi plate holding several dessicated tea bags, and a pair of French underwear that landed here when I got sidetracked on the way to my dresser.  The underwear is the lone survivor of an explosion of dresser drawers and closets and plastic bins that resulted in two trips to the Salvation Army drop box at the town dump.  (I know, I know, the Salvie hates all gay people, but the way I look at it, that just means they deserve to have to deal with all the crap I don’t want.  They owe me, big time.)  I finally got rid of the clothes because it had been 4 years since I last wore many of them and when you account for pregnancy, postpartum (and in my case, post-postpartum) we could be talking about 8 years total before I even stand a chance of zipping those size 6 jeans.  Dumping them was more liberating and less tragic than I might have thought.  I could say this is because I’m wiser now, sexier, love myself more, but that wouldn’t be entirely truthful.  It just seems like I wore those clothes a long time ago and I can’t imagine wearing them again.

But I kept the underwear, although I’m not exactly sure why.  Maybe because you can’t give underwear to the Salvation Army, maybe because it’s pretty, maybe because it’s French.  (About 100 years ago my college boyfriend’s mother stood beside me as I flipped through the racks at a couture consignment shop on the Upper East Side telling me to “remember now, if it’s French we buy it and we make it fit.”)

I remember the night Chris and I bought the underwear.  I was 25 years old and we were in Paris.  We were looking for a church that had a series of frescoes depicting Jacob wrestling with the angel when we walked by a lingerie store.  I do not know what time it was (I hardly ever did then) but it was dark and snowing, and we weren’t sure we would make it to the church before it closed.  Still, we went into the store and right away I saw the underwear and the matching bra, both spun out of the most delicate wine-colored lace.  Right away we bought it.  We bought the set, which I had never done before, and which made me feel old and beautiful and wanted.

Just a few minutes later we found the church, although the sanctuary was dim by then and we had to stand a long time to make out the details of the paintings.  But we had no where else to be and so we did stay a long time, moving closer to the paintings and then away, then closer again, until our eyes adjusted and the paintings became the light we needed to see by.

I forgot about the underwear while we were looking at the paintings, which says something about the ease and abundance of sex in our lives then.  It was as though how I might look to her, what we might do, were as certain as the sleep that would follow, the deep uninterrupted sleep of people who had yet been deprived, people who had not yet offered each other sexual favors and money in exchange for one more hour of quiet.

This lack of anticipation seems like the ultimate luxury to me now.  And while I do believe that even then I was grateful for what I had, I do not think that word–grateful–had the same meaning it does now.  My sense of gratitude is commensurate with my understanding of all that can be lost to me, and I don’t mean sleep.  I was grateful for Chris then, but did not truly understand (or even stop to imagine) what it would be like to live without her.  I was generally, mindlessly, grateful for my health, and for what I assumed to be my fertility, and for my ability to work and write and travel.  I did not yet have a marriage or a child or a home.  I had not yet walked out onto this cliff’s edge of dependence and love where I now live my ostensibly secure and peaceful life.

We finished looking at the paintings.  Before leaving I turned to take one last look at the sanctuary and pushed the door open with my back.  I put on my mitten and before I could feel that the other was missing from my pocket I saw it on the church steps, nearly covered in snow.  I was in the midst of a great run of luck then.  I am in it still, although it is more precarious now, because I recognize it for what it is.  Then it was just life.  It was just the way things were.