Coats2

The Meaning of Coats

The first coat I ever had was a calf-length camel's hair coat that my mother bought for me at a thrift shop. It wasn't so much that I disliked the coat, except that it made me feel slighted since we were fairly well off. It's the only coat I had all the way through high school and college winters, and I think was a contributing factor in my getting frostbite a couple of times. It was my barrier between me and the elements, although it didn't always measure up to the cold of winter, got soaked in the rain, and wasn't as fashionable as what my friends had.

My mother did buy me one new coat, all white, edged with fake white fur. We were going on a trip, and perhaps she was concerned I might look shabby. But I thought it looked ridiculous. I never wore that one, but spent most of my youth wearing the camel's hair coat.

I became so used to my condition of being in that coat, and in spite of it getting quite threadbare, I wore it well in marriage and through the years of the birth of my children. The only other coats I had ever worn were an endless stream of used London Fog raincoats that got shipped to me. Both my parents wore them, and bought new ones every year, since they were as shapeless as Columbo to start with and looked ever more so after a couple of washings. Then they went straight to me.

The first thing I did when I began to think of divorce, was go out and buy a fashionable rain coat. As if something was different inside, the new coat was a skin that symbolized the internal transformation.

Eventually that fashionable rain coat got threadbare too, and with all the old ones gone, I began to replace them. Now I have too many coats, but have trouble parting with them because of all the symbolism they have for me. Protection from the elements, freedom of choice.

But I should really get rid of some of those coats now. The accumulation is starting to get in the way of where I wanted, and want, to go.

Andrea K., October 2011