Sentimental.

Our house is the process of living through a self imposed biennale of decluttering. It is torturously painful yet it has to be done. There are strict rules and regulations as to what gets to stay and what heads down the road to the Vinnie's bin......with clothes, if it hasn't been worn since we previously went through the process, then it goes....without hesitation. No exceptions.

Have you ever clapped eyes on a more hideous dress:

 Here's a close up of the nasty, polyester fabric just in case you are unconvinced:

Are you surprised to hear that it's staying? It was a present from my dad. He gave it to me when he came back from a trip working in New Caledonia, soon after we'd bought our first home and embarked on babies. As an electrical engineer, dad travelled the world with his work. Soon after finishing Uni he and his cronies headed to the UK and Switzerland. Then, there was a period of relative stability after he and mum got married and we all lived in Sydney....before our family relocated, when I was ten, to a remote Indonesian island halfway between Jakarta and Singapore. This signalled 'hello Sydney boarding school' for my sister and I.....until work took mum and dad to Launceston, of all places......where we all stayed while he continued jetting off solo to work in such far-flung places as Peru and Taiwan.  He would be gone for months at a time with very little communication...we're talking about back in the days before email here. In hindsight, it really was a selfish and evasive way to participate in family life......it wasn't until two weeks before my wedding that he confirmed that he'd be walking me down the aisle.......and he didn't meet my eldest daughter until she was almost a month old.....but then again, he never met my youngest daughter at all. 

So, this atrocious dress was a joke. As he laughingly gave it to me he said that it would be the perfect attire for housework. He gave mum one too. On his next visit I met him at the door dolled up in the dress.....he roared with laughter. 

Then the dress was promptly relegated to the deep dark depths of the rag bag, which was how it somehow escaped vanishing forever. I found it again after he died. It's staying because it's impregnated with memory....it makes me cry and laugh at the same time....shame it's so ugly.

My husband has two items of clothing that he religiously saves. On the weekend he squirrelled them away to a safe place in the attic so I couldn't take a photo so I'll just have to describe them instead. One is a jacket which he refers to as his 'Get One'....and no he wasn't wearing it when I met him. Once upon a time, in a previous incarnation, it was his old school blazer.....until he and his university rowing crew came up with the idea of cutting off the magenta braid and having the University Boat Club embroidered pocket sewn on over the top of the school crest. Apparently, so the folklore according to my husband goes, whenever these eight blokes wore these particular jackets they were irresistible. This was well before I knew him and often speculate whether any of the other mothers at school may have known him in his hey day....wearing this jacket. 

The other is his battle suit.....the retired dinner suit that he kitted himself out in every time he went to a B&S Ball. It is still faintly emits the odour of sheep shit and Bundy Rum and is stained with patches of food colour spat by other ute driving revellers. I can't wait to hear the explanation he comes up with one day in the future when the children ask him what exactly these special treasures are. Hmm.

Rx