Daddy was tall and skinny. So skinny he had difficulty finding khakis with a small enough waist to stay up on him. He had crystal blue eyes. Daddy always wore blue Oxford-cloth shirts, with an occasional drift to Swiss cotton. When he died, we emptied dozens of light blue shirts from his long walk-in closet, a blue that matched his eyes perfectly. We buried him in khakis and a blue shirt. When I purchased an additional blue shirt recently, I asked my husband Peter if he liked my new shirt, and he said, “It’s just like all your other blue shirts, isn’t it”? That got me thinking and I went and looked at my closet, only to realize that about a third of it was made up of blue shirts. Daddy’s Mama had blue eyes too, and when she died, she had an entire closet with sky blue dresses. It hurt me deeply to give them away to chartiy, because blue is part of who we are. I bought a new blue shirt today, just to keep up the tradition.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 21:53:21 +0000