love & pearl snaps

Yesterday afternoon I looked our master bedroom straight in the eyes and mouthed "bring it".. This room and I have a history of scuffles (from wallpaper removal to summer heat) and this was going to be our "high-noon" show down minus the black cowboy hats and shiny Smith & Wessons.  

    It was one of the first days, in what seemed like an eternity, that I was able to go upstairs during the day without finding myself perspiring profusely and smelling like a weight room (thank you, September weather!). This meant that I would be having my final showdown with the numerous totes full of clean and organized clothing that dad & Crystal had arranged for us while we were away on island time in July. 

    Why the animosity, you ask? Well... Chris and I have been sleeping in a room with dimensions 8.7' X 7.8' for entirely too long. This has mainly been due to the fact that the master bedroom was where we took everything we needed to stash away and not deal with for a while and the fact that we were planning on renovating it as soon as physically possible and didn't want our bed in there being in the way.

    Well... Its been 6 months and neither of us has really got down to business with that room.. So yesterday I went up there with the grand intention of bagging up 2/3rds of our clothing and taking it to Goodwill in Peru... I'm pretty sure Chris owns at least 45 pairs of jeans..some missing the crotchal region entirely.. some that he boasts proudly that he has owned and fit into since 8th grade.. I am no innocent here either. I'm embarrassed at the number of things hanging in my closet that still have their original tag on them and have never been worn. A few other of my clothing vices include hanging on to pairs of shorts I fit into during skinny phases of the past few years, which, even if they did end up fitting again someday, would be waaaay too short for my age anyways. Ahh, the joys of getting older. 

    

    So as I powered through 3 totes full of clothes, plopping every other item into a bag for Goodwill, I gazed up at the closet in the opposite corner of the room....

Hmmmm, I thought, It would be soooo great if I could go through his side of the closet and throw out all of those shirts that haven't fit him for years.. Man, I would leave this room feeling like such a rockstar....

    I powered through, and almost took some joy in throwing out that white and coral striped polo that he refused to wear because of a weird mystery stain, and that blue and white long-sleeved polo that had morphed into a pink collared shirt since the little red pony on the chest did not behave in the washing machine.. Muuaahahaha! (evil laugh) I was making progress!! As I grabbed the next hanger without really paying much attention and began stuffing the garment into the big white trash bag, I gasped realizing what I had in my hand..... A row of iridescent buttons peered back at me from the fat white Hefty bag. I yanked it back out and smoothed it out on my lap..   

    The pearl snaps....This shirt was the shirt he had worn on our first date over 6 years ago...I couldn't throw this one out, could I? The size on the tag read "L".. Lord knows that Chris hadn't fit in to a large for years now so its not like he was going to wear it again....I couldn't think for the life of me when the last time Chris had even worn a pearl snap shirt...I was trying to rationalize keeping the darned thing. I set it aside and told myself I'd grab some other hangers and get back to business. The next 3 shirts had the same effect on me. Two were pearl snaps and one was not. 

These were the shirts he had on continuous rotation during the early days of our courtship. These were the shirts that he'd worn while laying back on the dock at Devin's pond so many years ago looking up at the stars with me. The nights when he'd failed to mention to me the great many bats that were swooping inches above us eating insects, because he knew I'd freak and ruin the moment. I sat there holding these shirts wondering what I was going to do with them... Pillows? No, the fabric was too thin...  

I folded them up nicely and put them into a small tote at the top of our closet. Even if they might never be worn again, I feel no guilt in keeping them. They are part of our story and I feel lucky that they weren't thrown out a long time ago. So although I didn't exactly leave the room feeling like a rockstar, I left it feeling like a hopeless romantic and that's even better