I’m retiring the red flannel shirt.
See, I was in my house researching the death penalty when my mom walked in, wearing her high-heeled boots.
Mom left her dog, pistol and homemade kombucha behind in her truck. She strode, fearless, through the chaos of the life I share with four boys. She sniffed the air, hung a boy’s jacket on a hook and started stacking clean bowls in a kitchen cupboard with the energy of a jackrabbit.
“Hi honeyyy!” Mom called out.
I trudged from my office in my old flannel shirt and a set of sweatpants I stole from Firstborn’s closet.
“It’s time to retire THAT from the video news business,” said Mom, flicking her finger in my general location.
“I… need to retire from video news?” I asked, wondering if this might be my chance to move to a remote cabin and live off trapped squirrels.
“No, silly goose,” she giggled. “That flannel.”
I looked down. My tattered red flannel looked back up at me; riddled with holes, threadbare and faded.
“But,” I stammered, “you know how long I waited to get this.”
She nodded. She knows, and I know, how long I waited to get the red, men’s-size-small, button-up flannel shirt with one pocket and a collar.
When we were kids, my oldest brother Leland used to wear the red flannel outside when he chopped wood.
I had to stay inside and wash dishes, which I now realize isn’t because I’m female: It’s because I’m uncoordinated and nobody wanted me to chop my feet off.
How I coveted that shirt! My brother shoved rather than rolled the shirtsleeves up when he unloaded the split logs into a metal nest near our wood-burning stove. He piled wood onto a raging fire with no fear of the flames or the searing black stove portal. He sweated confidence.
But it wasn’t my turn yet. Leland handed the shirt down next to my other brother, Seth, who wore it while patching my bike tubes in our garage. His elbows jutted at the red-checked joints as he gave my good-as-new bike wheel a spin, and gave me a grin.
I punctured many bike tubes and caught a lot of “air” on the homemade jumps my brothers made me from cinderblocks and plywood, but still I had no button-up flannel. I had to settle for fuzzy sweaters and stirrup leggings. I glowered murderously under my sparkly hair scrunchies.
Tomboyhood only showered hand-me-down blessings upon me when my brothers outgrew their clothes without first wearing them ragged.
Finally, when I was 11, Seth outgrew the shirt. Hitting a towering six-foot-three on a random Tuesday, he also outgrew under-confidence, shyness – and Leland. Just like Mom warned everyone he would.
As she folded a stray hand towel in my kitchen on Wednesday, Mom watched these memories banter my gaze.
“I didn’t say you had to throw the shirt in the fire, hun, you just CAN’T wear it when you do the news,” she said with a frown. “Hang it up, and wear it on your day off.”
Mom is concerned with how I look on Cowboy State Daily’s video newscast. She wants me clean and polished. I have the opposite goal. I want to exude enough mountain haggery to terrify the out-of-staters.
This red flannel shirt means more than either of those goals, though.
I’m among those people who love twice-used or thrice-used clothing and books. Not just because of the obvious material fact – that if a thing dodged the dumpster, it’s a sign it has quality – but because of the other, intangible, metaphysical sprites those prior owners left in the threads or between the pages.
My red flannel shirt has enclosed more heartaches than just my own, and weathered more storms than I can remember. It’s faced more fires than I’ve built, and overseen more tricky repair jobs than I’ve attempted.
Wearing it has always infused me with a borrowed courage: the idea that hey, the flannel shirt made it through all that, and so can I.
But my mom is right. Or, as right as a woman can be when she’s squinting at all the clean mugs to make sure they’re actually clean.
The tattered, red, men’s-size-small flannel shirt is retiring from video news. I’m not throwing it in the fire, and I’ll never get rid of it. But because this is the end of an era for it, the least I can do is offer this grateful eulogy.
“Oooh! You should wear a YELLOW cashmere sweater next time,” chirped Mama.
And that’s where she’s wrong.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
