The art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
                     – H. Havelock Ellis

To Readers: Did your family use a cedar chest to store and protect clothes from one season to the next? The biannual trip to the cedar chest was a traditional exercise in holding on and letting go, the essentials of growth.

September Assessments

Long before there were walk-in closets, families like mine used cedar chests to store clothes for the following year.  Cedar emitted a scent that warded off bugs and pests to prevent damage to clothing.

September's cool crisp mornings reminded us that a new season was approaching, dictating a visit to the cedar chest where winter clothes from the previous year were neatly layered and protected. 

The cedar chest was like a magic box. Clothes went it but they came out forever changed. My younger self didn't realize that I was doing the changing.

I liked those visits to the cedar chest. Each sweater or skirt resurfaced from its banishment was like a reunion with an old friend.  

          ( "Here's my plaid jumper!" )

And it was a time to have my mother's full attention, having me try on last year's clothes.  Somehow, she would voice her assessments with straight pins dangling from her mouth, ready for letting out a hem and pinning up new ones.  I can still feel her fingers tickling my skin as she determined how much seam might be let out, allowing for another year's use. 

Soon piles of clothes would lay on the floor.

A pile for the repairs.

A pile to give away.

And a pile of hand-me-downs still too big to grow into.

A Pile for Repairs:  

Mom would turn the clothes inside out to inspect the seams.  How are they holding up? Do they need restitching?   Or perhaps they need to be let out. 

Turning things inside out is revealing. It can feel as though humanity, our country and our world is being turned inside out; seams exposed for inspection. 

If we believe in the promise of tomorrow, we must know that the sturdy seams will last, and others will need to be mended . . .  by us.
                                                               g. hill

Piles to Discard or Give Away:  

Thomas Edison spoke of the value of discarding.  He said every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.  Nature shows us growth is absent without change, without discarding what has been spent. 

Beliefs, like leaves on a tree will bud, be tossed and tested and finally blown to the wind to allow for new seeds of thought.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
                                         ― Anais Nin

Piles of Hand-me-downs: To Be Grown Into

I am sure some resented having to wear hand-me-downs, but I loved them.  They came to me from my older cousins, representing milestones, something for me to grow into, not unlike the virtues and values handed down to me from my ancestors. 

Each season, there would be some clothes still too big for me.  They would be carefully laid back into the cedar chest. Their time was yet to come. 

Not unlike our highest ideals, handed down, yet still too big, waiting for the fullness of time.

We have been handed down a model for living.  He said, 

"Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”      (Matthew 25:40)

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Growth starts with a deep understanding of oneself.
                      Lao Tzu

Images are AI generated and from Pixabay and Pixels.