Illustration © {link:http://www.ariannastolt.com}Arianna Stolt{/link}.
Mom gave me her mink for Christmas, and I wanted to protest.
She bore it in her arms like a gift of the Magi and announced, “Merry Christmas. It’s yours now. What does an old lady need with a mink, anyway?”
She was sixty-one, looking fifty. Her coat was her prize possession.
“Besides,” she said, plucking her old fur from my closet, “I think the mouton fits me better now.”
So that was it. She’d outgrown the mink and needed the volume of the Fifties swing-coat, the antique sheepskin fur she’d bought used forty years before, until she could afford the real thing. She’d given it to me “on loan,” like a museum piece, when she’d upgraded. The mouton was mud-brown, weighed about a hundred pounds, and looked like it had been through the London Blitz. It was my favorite garment.
“You don’t need to feel guilty about wearing this mink, either,” she continued, “because it’s third-hand.”
But it didn’t look it. It looked expensive.
The mouton was the perfect fur for a young woman during PETA’s ascendence because it was recycled and decidedly un-glam. No one could accuse me of supporting a cruel relic of the fashion industry in that old moth-catcher.
Mom had always talked of cutting it apart and making a giant teddy bear when it wore out, but she’d passed that window of opportunity. Her youngest grandchild was already ten. She never thought the coat shabby enough to discard, so the annual fall mending became ever more involved until eventually she’d relined the whole thing.
Now that she’d outgrown her treasure I felt ashamed that I wasn’t more sympathetic, but she was the one who’d chosen food over her figure, and now she was taking back the mouton without warning. I was embarrassed by my resentment. It was just like her to ambush my expectations, just as she had with the engagement ring she never wore and had promised me since childhood. That went to my brother’s fiancé without so much as a warning.
The mouton had kept me warm through eight winters in three states and abroad. I’d tramped through medieval castles and sipped steamy Christmas glühwein in that coat. I’d sledded and caroled with my daughters in that coat. I’d built snowmen with them in that coat and huddled under it with them on chilly nights. I’d built a whole winter wardrobe around that coat with jeans and the Puss ’n Boots my husband had given me for our first Christmas. I looked hot in that coat, and now she was snatching it away.
“You are going to be stunning in the mink,” she predicted. “Everyone will be jealous.”
I doubted that. Minks were for old biddies and rich bitches.
“There’s nothing like mink for warmth without weight,” she bragged.
I forced a gracious smile and thanked her. What right did I have to complain?
That evening I wore the mink to Christmas Eve Mass like a good daughter, and just as Mom had predicted several of the ladies in the choir went ga-ga over it. I made apologies to everyone else.
“It’s not really my style, but my mother gave it to me. What could I say?”
She left a few days later, and the mink hung neglected at the back of the closet for three weeks. Then an arctic cold snap forced my hand. In a contest between frostbite and a faux pas, I’ll opt for warmth every time. I tried dressing down the fur with my jeans and old boots, but a mink does not camouflage well.
A week went by with no let-up in the weather, followed by an ice storm, followed by a spate of single-digit temperatures — and I wore ostentation without a second thought. There was nothing like it for warmth without weight.
Then one day, I knew I’d overcome my aversion when I found myself sitting in the veterinarian waiting room, petting my cat and swathed in mink. It was oddly liberating, and ,the funny thing was, no one gave me a second glance.
When Mom died I reclaimed the mouton, but truth be told, I wear the mink more often. When I’m feeling like a pioneer fur-trapper, when the blizzard rages and the power goes out – I still reach for the old mouton. But it’s starting to look more and more like a teddy bear to me. I could be a grandmother soon. Maybe I should start shopping for a pattern.
Founder of the Broadneck Writers’ Workshop in Annapolis, Maryland, J.C. Elkin is an award-winning author of poetry, fiction and non-fiction that has appeared in such journals as Kestrel, Snowy Egret, The Serving House Journal, Ducts, Earth’s Daughters, The Way of the Buffalo, and The Bay Weekly, for which she is also a theater critic. A lifelong seamstress and bargain-shopping clothes-horse, she spends way too much time in front of the mirror.
Arianna Stolt is an illustrator and graphic designer living in Brooklyn. She loves information, home repair, drinking out of straws, and making friends on the internet. She blogs at Lifetime Achievement and you can find her on Twitter.
