Picasso goes for a walk

Yesterday morning I was at the Atlantic/Pacific station waiting for my transfer. As the crowded train approached I realized I wouldn’t be able to continue reading and I looked for the bookmark to put it away. It wasn’t anywhere in the book.

I flipped the pages front to back. Nothing. I opened up my bag and poked and rummaged through it while getting my head almost all the way in. No sign of it there either. I lost it the way I always do – it must have fallen off the book when I took it out on the platform while waiting for the earlier train.

There it would be, lying on the ground waiting to be trampled or getting coffee spilled on. Or maybe it had been blown on to the tracks by the swish of wind that precedes the coming of trains where it would end its days flattened and sliced by the power of the machine and its hundreds of commuters or be electrocuted by the third rail.

The poor bookmark didn’t deserve it. A gift from a friend who had recently been to Barcelona, it should have been kept safer. I’m a careless bookmark keeper and now the poor Picasso cats would suffer the consequences.

I grabbed a receipt from my wallet, stuck it in the book, and got on the train to go to work

It was a long, slow day with nothing exciting to report, but when I got home I found the Picasso cats bookmark back on my bed.

Every once in a while we get a glimpse at the secret lives objects lead while we’re not looking. It’s because of a hint of that knowledge that we repeatedly lift the couch cushions looking for a remote that wasn’t there the other three times we looked – because sometimes we find it the fifth time.

Just like I found this.



Every time I went to the co-op I would check the lost and found bin for the glove I lost in late December. It wasn’t there any of the other times I checked, but when I saw it last time I went grocery shopping I couldn’t contain letting out a noise like a cat who’s found a fly on his side of the window.

The two gloves are happy to be back together, but I wonder when I’ll hear about what happened between when I lost it on 12/29/09 and when it decided to make its way back to me and join the other forlorn inmates of the co-op lost and found bin on 1/02/10.

Gloves!

Last week I lost my dear glove and I was sad. I had another pair of city gloves, but I couldn’t find them. It was the one I wore when it was colder - fun tweed and leather with grenade shaped buttons. I knew I hadn’t lost them. I only wear them when it’s really cold, and if I had lost them while out and about I would have noticed, or at least my hands would have.

I couldn’t find them anywhere in my apartment, so having lost my black leather gloves I had to recruit my running gloves for general use. They weren’t happy about it and my hands weren’t happy about it, but it was temporary solution while I figured out what to do about gloves.

Before the week was out, a friend who had been gone for the holidays gave me a pair of gloves as a gift for taking care of her cat. (Thanks D!) Hers was woolly pair with cut fingers and a flap to cover them and my hands were happy when they tried them on.

So Saturday morning I headed over to the community garden on 6th Ave & 15th Street to compost. I take my compost down to the garden about once a week, depending on how much and what I cook that week. I was wearing my new woolly gloves. I was having a little trouble with the locks even though my fingers were exposed so I took them off. Gloves, not fingers. I was holding the gloves smushed in one hand as I struggled to open the gate.

After I finally got the locks off, I held them in my other hand and headed to the table near the entrance to leave them there. Since I’d rather not have my gloves on while composting, I was thinking of leaving them on the table with the locks to pick up on my way out.

As I approached the table I noticed there was a pair of abandoned gloves already there. They were covered in snow and frozen solid. Someone must be missing these terribly. I was thinking I needed to be careful not to leave mine there on the way out as this other person had, when I noticed they were tweed and leather gloves with grenade buttons.

I managed not to forget either pair this time. Thank you fellow garden members!

Winterloss

It was cold, it was early, I was in a rush. It was hours before I noticed, but when I did, I was full of grief and regret.

Dear glove, I found you in a desperate time. The stores were optimistically stocking bikinis while a blizzard waged outside. There were no gloves to be found anywhere. “Sorry, it’s the Spring collection,” they said without a hint of apology.

I had been looking for days for a pair before I found you. You were the last of your kind. Marked down. Final Sale. I couldn’t believe my luck. Though you had no lining, you had flair and you stuck by me for the rest of that season and a full season more.

We were going on two years – ten in glove years – and I shouldn’t have taken you for granted.

Yesterday I got up at five am. I had some coffee and bite to eat before heading out for my shift at the co-op. When I got there I locked up the bike, took off helmet and gloves, turned off the blinker, and headed inside to sign in.

When I came back out hours later you were gone. Inside my bag your partner was still resting next to the keys, alone. Oh, glove, where art thou?

Roadkill

One of the advantages of having a uniform is that you don’t have to worry about what to wear. When you are the poorest kid in the school bringing homemade popcorn for lunch, that’s a relief.

To make things worse, my mother used to sew most of my clothes and I hated having to wear a purple jumper made just for me when all the other kids were wearing balloon skirts.

But I didn’t hate everything I wore. I also had hand-me-downs.

I have a cousin who is very close to me in age. Her father worked in fashion, her mother loved clothes, and every few months I’d get to rifle through huge garbage bags filled with my cousin’s discarded clothing. Things I had coveted a month ago and had seen her wear only once or twice were there. Piles and piles of almost new store bought and even imported clothing up for grabs. For me! Skirts, dresses, bows, ribbons, pockets, all the extra details my mother didn’t bother sewing were there. And I didn’t have to share with my brother. The only thing better than those bags was when the school library received book shipments.

But all that ended when we hit puberty and my cousin stopped growing. I didn’t. At almost 5'4 I'm the tallest woman in my family by at least four inches and now I have no cousin giving me hand-me-downs.

Sometimes I get them from friends, but it's rare and often awkward. It’s hard to explain that I’m not being sarcastic – I’m really that excited.

Fortunately for me, Brooklyn is a great place for hand-me-downs from strangers. A walk down the brownstone belt is better than a trip to a mall. Clothing on railings better than on racks. I’ve gotten cashmere sweaters from boxes by stoops and three weeks ago, just as the weather was starting to turn, I picked up a J-Crew black wool pea coat.

Last Monday I was riding my bike back from an early co-op shift. I was tired – still recovering from Halloween excesses. I passed a black lump on the road. It was wet from the rain and it looked like it might have been run over by a bike or two, but it was still recognizable.

I checked for oncoming traffic and circled back to take a better look. It was a pair of elbow length black gloves with jeweled wrists – the kind of thing I would never buy, but have always wanted to have. Without hesitating I placed the limp wet gloves in my basket and sped off, hoping no Audrey Hepburn would come out chasing after them.

She didn’t. I hand washed in the tub and it took them about a day and a half to dry before I could try them on. They fit like a glove and I can’t wait for an excuse to wear them.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s brunch party anyone?