A closet offers a wonderful repository for all the things you think you need but not right now. You can pack up old photographs, unused games or toys, the gifts you never wanted, the clothes you can’t or won’t wear anymore, close the door and forget they even exist.

Closets make perfect metaphors for all we hide away, our Jungian “shadow selves,” our repressed desires. The unexplored closet can become an untapped world of possibility, the doorway to an adventure. Our own Narnias.

Skeletons hide in closets, too. Concealed, closed off, the closet provides cover for the secrets we possess but hesitate to acknowledge.

When I was little, we had a closet under the stairway in our Wake Forest house. The stairway was steep and the closet, filling the space beneath it—reached back to the lowest step. It was dark in the furthest recesses. Although Mother stored her vacuum cleaner in the closet and other cleaning supplies, I liked to imagine it was the entry to a secret hideaway.

When she wasn’t looking, I would slip inside, close the door, and enjoy being surrounded by the darkness until the smell of Pledge Furniture polish and other cleaning products forced me back into the light.

The closets in my St. Louis house are not as conducive to dreams. As is typical of the century-old houses here, they are shallow and cramped and frequently inhabited by brown recluse spiders.

I have them stuffed with all the sundry items I’ve collected over the thirty-three years I’ve lived in this house: the clothes I never wear, a set of free weights I meant to use to tone my arms, a box of old letters I’m reluctant to toss, and more.

Lately, I’ve been unzipping the garment bags hanging there and inspecting the clothes inside. What will I do with them when I move?

In the process, I’ve discovered more than just unwanted items. I’ve discovered a touchstone to the past, a container of memories. Perhaps my meager St. Louis closets really do harbor hidden worlds.

With each dress, each suit, each jacket, I find my way into memories I didn’t know I had.

There’s the tobacco-colored suit, I have already described; the summer frock I bought at the Ito Yokado department store in Musashi Sakai, thrilled that it actually fit me. (It doesn’t now.) And so much more.

In one bag, I found a purple dress that belonged to my mother. I can’t remember when I acquired it.

I assume I brought it back with me to St. Louis after Mother moved into Sunrise, the assisted living facility where she spent her last years.

When she moved there my sisters, brother, and I sold her tidy condo in downtown Raleigh and took care of the items she had left behind and would never need again. Some we parceled out among ourselves.

(Actually, Mother and Daddy had already allocated most of the items amongst the five of us. We simply carried off what was meant to be ours). The rest we either sold or gave away.

The dress was a rich purple jacquard Japanese silk with a finely etched pattern of white floss. The dress was so nicely tailored that I assumed she must have bought it, but closer inspection revealed my mother’s own hand stitching.

The knee-length skirt flared into panels. Neatly tailored seams ran from the bodice to the hem. There was a side zipper just under the arm, and a stylish V-shape at the neckline.

When did she ever wear this dress? Perhaps to some tea at the seminary?
No, it would have needed to be a more festive occasion.

My mother’s purple dress

Mother rarely attended “festive occasions.” She mostly lived between the house and the church and later when she returned to school at Chapel Hill she added one more stop to her routine.

She dressed modestly, in serviceable clothing, wash-and-wear, wrinkle free.

I don’t recall ever seeing her in the purple dress.

After I took it home with me, I wore it once to a dinner party at my friend Iva’s house.

I wore it once again for the photoshoot Joe Angeles did with me in celebration of my kimono collection.
The dress fit, but it was clearly tailored for my mother. The waistline was too short, for one thing, and the shoulders a bit too narrow.

Mother had long willowy legs and slender, slopping shoulders.

The dress must have conformed perfectly to her figure when she was a younger woman, before all the babies, before she became the mother I never saw as anything but frumpy.

My mother was born on June 5, 1923. How many fashion trends occurred over her lifetime, trends she mostly ignored but for this one pretty dress?
As I run my hand over the fine purple fabric now and draw my finger along the seams she stitched, I feel closer to her.

There is so much about my mother I never knew or understood, but with each passing year I admire her all the more.