A SECRET OBJECT I KEEP HIDDEN IN THE BACK OF MY UNDERWEAR DRAWER

A SECRET OBJECT I KEEP HIDDEN IN THE BACK OF MY UNDERWEAR DRAWER
c 2007 by Naomi Baltuck

Yes, I really do have a secret object that I keep hidden in the back of my underwear drawer. It is a teeny tiny doll-sized white cotton undershirt. It was in a bag earmarked for the Salvation Army, but at the last minute I snatched it back from among the outgrown astronaut foot pajamas, hand-knitted booties, and Alice-in-Wonderland baby dresses. And I tucked it in the back of my underwear drawer.

Since it is the same color as everything else in there, except for my Saturday night undies, you wouldn't even know that it's there, if you didn't know where to look. That little shirt isn't a family heirloom, nor is it unique or valuable in any way, except to me. That's because my daughters Elly and Bea both wore it as fuzzy-headed milk-scented cooing and gurgling most-beautiful-in-the-world newborn babies.

Once in awhile that tiny white shirt still sees the light of day. Not on those "hurry up or we're going to be late! mornings," but sometimes on a quiet afternoon, when I'm putting away freshly folded laundry. On those special days when I take it out and look at it, I can almost smell the baby shampoo, can almost feel the round little tummies that used to fill that shirt. And every time I take it out and look at it, I marvel that my grownup girls were ever tiny enough to fit into it.

Recently I realized that, if anything ever happened to me, no one in the world would know or even care what happened to that little shirt. It would be dumped with the rest of my underwear into a bag earmarked for the Salvation Army. So I showed it to my daughter Bea, who thought it was cute. Then I told her about her first night home from the hospital. She was wearing the little white undershirt, or one just like it, when I picked her up to nurse her. As I watched her lying on the bed beside me, by the soft night light, I was filled with awe at the sight of this new little person looking up at me like a little old wisewoman. I smiled in wonder at her perfect little toes, and her tiny little feet, and those exquisite little fingers. And just as I was nearly overcome and moved to tears at the miracle of life and birth, she reached up with her tiny little finger and poked me right in the eye. Ever since then, I told Bea, she has kept me from taking myself too seriously.

Then I told Bea about how, when she first came home from the hospital, wearing that tiny little shirt, or one just like it, her four year old sister Elly rubbed her tummy and told her everything she would need to know to get by in the world. "You only get to drink milk right now, but when you're a big girl," confided Elly to her brand new baby sister, "you get to have macaroni and cheese from a fork. And some day you'll learn to walk, and then run, but you have to be careful or you might fall down and scrape your knee, and then you'll bleed, but your blood has platelets that will make a scab and you won't bleed any more, but you can't pick the scab or you will make it bleed again..." What a warm, wise welcome into our family Bea received that day! Somehow that baby undershirt was not just an undershirt anymore. It was a priceless treasure woven from the fabric of stories.

What other treasures do I have that house stories, eager to be told? The china bowl on my dresser, I tell my children, once belonged to their Great Great Grandma Brownyer, whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. That is a story for another time. I wanted to tell them about how their Great Great Grandma Brownyer was orphaned far too early in life, abused by strangers, adopted by others, and orphaned yet again before she was fifteen. Yet in the late 1870s, or perhaps it was the early '80s, in the days when every manufactured cigarette was hand-rolled, she supported herself by working in a cigarette factory. Sometimes she and the other young women she worked with would take the cockroaches that crawled across their worktables, and roll them into cigarettes to make each other laugh. Because if you couldn't laugh, you might cry. Great Great Grandma Brownyer chose laughter.

There is a tale that hangs on every picture, most of them painted by my sister Constance, that decorates the walls of my house. To every object, there is a story or two or ten, from the dining room set that I brought from Detroit after my mother died, to the tiny orange-scented perfume bottle in my jewelry chest, the only tangible gift I still have from my father.

To every story, there is an object. Look around and think about what gives your things meaning, and I'll guarantee there's a story to go with it. Perhaps you never told it because you considered it too tiny, too mundane, too silly to share. But little stories often hold bigger truths.

Am I teaching my children to worship things? I don't think so. From the time they were little, I have told Elly and Bea, "People are more important than things." That's what we said every time there was an accident and something got broken. It's what I told my husband Thom when he was washing the dishes after a dinner party and accidentally broke one of my great grandmother's crystal goblets. I valued the goblet, but once it was broken, I never missed it. What I still have is a story about how lucky I was to marry a guy who was man enough to wash dishes. So the object of a story might change, even after the object no longer exists. Like the story of the tailor's overcoat: after it was worn down to a buttonhole, there was still enough good material left to make a story.

On the wall of my kitchen is displayed a picture that my daughter Bea drew of a paintbrush and an artist's pallet, and underneath she wrote, "Only the artist knows the story of her painting." That's so true. Unless you tell the story to your children, to your lover, to your friends, or to your enemies, that story will disappear when you do. But tell it, and it will take on a life of its own. Most stories are not written in stone. Most stories change and grow with each telling, and each teller. Perhaps one day my daughter Bea will show that very same teeny tiny undershirt to her children and say, "When I was a baby..." Or perhaps the shirt will end up in a bag of underwear earmarked for the Salvation Army, and then Bea might say, "My mother once saved a tiny white undershirt from the rag pile, and kept it in her underwear drawer, and sometimes she took it out and showed it to me, and told me stories about when I was a baby..."

Comments

[Terri]

WOW

[Michelle Brownyer]

Grandma Brownyer was a very strong person. I'm glad she never gave up!