Ode to My Sweater

Where do I begin to tell the story ~Of how great a love can be ~The sweet love story that is older than the sea ~The simple truth about the … oh, sorry, wrong story.

I have this sweater. I believe I have had this sweater for over ten years. It is something the average tasteful person would not buy so I must have bought it really cheap. It is multi-toned brown patch work. It is a big button down the front kind of sweater that has this huge floppy big collar and has fake stitching around every edge, as you might imagine some back woods-woman was hand sewing this sweater during the winter of 1983, especially for me. The best thing about my sweater is its warmth and softness. All other sweaters are measured to this one sweater and none have come close.

I have worn this sweater everywhere. When it was new I’d wear it over a shirt for work; as it got older I retired it to wearing it outside of work; now, older still, I can no longer wear it out of the house. My sweater is succumbing to the inevitable end of its 100% acrylic life. It’s journey began many years ago from Korea by ship. Making its way across the vast sea to our shores where it was rescued by a White Stag and brought, most likely, to the nearest Wal-Mart, until the day I found it and brought it home.

Now my sweater bears life’s hardships, although it still has its original five buttons, the button holes are each two to three inches wide, the edge stitching once so careful sewn by a back woods-woman is now a thread of its original beauty, and the saddest part of all, my sweater is now so thread-bare, I must wear a sweater over my sweater to have any warmth.

But I will not send my sweater to the big yarn pile, as some have suggested. Each week I proudly bring my sweater to the laundry mat with all my other so-called warm shirts and wash and dry it as it remains part of my daily winter wardrobe. But alas, this may be the last holiday my sweater will see. I feel soon it will just give up and unravel itself…