Part One, 1997
Lately I've been the beneficiary of goods that someone else has outgrown. These things are usually called hand-me-downs. It's the worn out stuff, the not-yet-ready-for-Goodwill stuff that a parent, sibling, or cousin has gotten too big for or just doesn't want anymore. They are uninterested in it, have moved beyond it to a new level of chic. But since the things to which I have lately become heir to formerly belonged to my daughter, I call them hand-me-ups.
My first new item is a desk reject. “I never use it,” Hana told me, “I always sit on the floor.” Who am I to quibble over her study habits? She has a better GPA than I ever did. So I gave her the plush chair in which I never sat in exchange for the desk at which she never sat. Hana keeps her chair next to the hub of her phone and now I'm no longer a paper-toting nomad in my own house.
The lack of desk in her room somehow prompted Hana to perform a closet and drawer purge. New items of clothing had been coming to roost in her closet, ones with increasingly narrower silhouettes than heretofore. At the end of her activities I found a stack of jeans in my room from her Big Pants Era that had presumably outgrown her! I tried them on. When I climbed into them, most of the jeans fell to my ankles. But during her slimming-down phase, Hana had picked up a pair of jeans that were fitted in the hips and flared wildly from there. Just my style! I wore my new/old loose jeans the next day with a tight little tank top and a nice belt.
When Hana came home from high school with her friend Pam, she jumped up and exclaimed, “Mom! You look so cute! Doesn’t she look cute, Pam? She’s wearing my old jeans.” Hana ran to get her camera. “Here, Pam, take our picture.” We stood together for the shot, smiling and happy with our trades and ourselves. Anyone can see that the Big Pants Look was handed up, too. Who says we don’t learn from our children?
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