Dear Yellow Sweater,
I miss you. Sure, I was so uncertain about you at the time, especially your color. And sure, I live in a desert that is rarely out of triple digit heats and even when it does I am the human embodiment of a heater and haven’t worn a sweater or jacket in over four years. But still, I miss you.
Long before there existed a magical pair of jeans that fit a circle of friends in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, you provided some real magic in a similar vain to their fictionalized one. You came into our lives in the guise of a simple warming and/or optional layering garment in my brother rucksack when he came home from being overseas with the military one Christmas when I was in junior high. (In my day it was Junior High, grades 7-9 until we as 9th grades finished our junior high years and headed to high school only for the first time the grade below us came along. Last of an era. Though it did help camouflage us as the youngest, so we did not experience being a “freshman” class, which had some benefits, but I digress.)
Ned pulled out the sweater and offered it to me and it fit in the best baggy new wave fashion, and the yellow- a color I was not previously able to wear with my own coloring- complimented in the most fantastic way. I wanted to wear you everywhere and always, yet when the night was ending and we were all going to bed, I gave you back to Ned who wore you the next day and looked splendidly solid. In a surprising twist my brother Jeff wore you the next day, I cannot remember why, but it fit him amazing as well. Throughout the few days of the holiday we were altogether, we marveled at how you served all of us equally well.
When Ned went back to his post, I was certain I would not ever see you again. Yet, there you were, on my bed when I made it back into my bedroom! Ned has always been generous. Wow, did we enjoy you for the next few years. Mainly my mom and I with an occasional male family member trying you on for size or convenience. You did not ever let us down, you always fit, you were always there for all of us.
It was the magic of community and comfort you have come to represent in my memory. I have no idea where you went. I do hope you are happy wherever you ended up. You brought us so much and lately, I wish I had a sliver of that time to wrap around me now. I know it is all in the past, that particular merging of all the elements needed for us to see and embrace your magic, but that comfort has been elusive on a few occasions lately, and I would love to have that security once again, even for an instant.
Thank you yellow sweater, thank you.
Sincerely,
sm
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