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Strings Attached

There are classic signs of the changing seasons. The robin redbreast chirps the beginning of spring; the tips of crocuses push through thawing ground. Orange borders tinge the leaves of sugar maples, and sunset creeps ever earlier, marking the onset of autumn. Two holidays, Memorial Day to Labor Day, mark the beginning and end of summer.

Winter, an old adage has it, is heralded by frost on the pumpkin; more likely now, that is frost on the windshield. But there is one invariable sign of winter that often goes unnoticed among the classic signs of the changing seasons: one forlorn glove dropped in a parking lot.

Once upon a time when we were young, there were mitten strings, often hand-crocheted with each end attached to a mitten, with the long chain running through the sleeves of the jacket leaving the mittens dangling from either end. Alternatively, there were store-bought clips that attached each mitten to the end of the sleeve. The main thing was that the mittens were always there.

Mitten strings however do not follow us into adulthood. That one glove in the parking lot once was part of a pair, a pair that kept both hands warm, not just one lucky hand.

Now it is one forlorn glove, about to show tread marks as its erstwhile owner, unaware it has been abandoned, runs it over pulling out of the parking space.

There comes the moment, of course, when the hand reaches into the pocket or the pocketbook for the gloves and then the ugly truth is revealed: there is only one. Is there a nostalgic moment of longing for mitten strings or just a shrug, that’s the way winter is?

I sometimes wonder if I should pick up those lost mittens, wash them, somehow restore them to useful life.

It is the same feeling I had when I walked regularly with a friend after Christmas. At the end of many driveways waiting for trash removal were forlorn and wilted poinsettias, their seasonal usefulness at an end. Or was it? We conceived a plan: we would be a poinsettia rescue squad, taking those abandoned plants to our houses, watering them, nursing them back to health for next Christmas.

We never did it, and I doubt that the lost mitten squad is in my future, though I muse about stationing a basket of single mittens by my door so I never have to go out without a pair. Better three mittens than one, or perhaps I could provide a basket on the front step to share my largesse with other one-mittened hands.

I could still use mitten strings, however, for a lot more than lost mittens. What I need now is mitten strings of the mind. Growing older means, along with graying hair roots and the sad knowledge that I am far too old to appear in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, even though on my best day and in my best dreams I have never looked remotely like anybody on those pages, there are some things that I can never recapture.

Memory is one of them, memory not memories. I have my memories, they are not gone–vacations, children growing up, holidays past. They are sustaining memories.

But memories are not memory. That is something entirely different and often revolves around mundane issues like whether can I remember where I put my keys and when the dentist appointment is.

I tried for a long time to ignore serial forgetfulness. Sure, I’ve told myself, my memory was just as good as ever, but maybe that particular day I forgot the dentist because I hadn’t slept well. I’ll latch on to any excuse other than admitting that forgetfulness is one of the changes that time brings to all of us.

I keep my calendar on my cell phone now. I note everything carefully, but there is still a problem I have not figured out how to solve: where did I put that phone? Maybe there is a market for mitten strings for cell phones.

Rita Christopher, a senior correspondent for Shore Publishing and the Valley Courier, writes the column Because You Didn’t Ask. She lives in the Connecticut River valley.