I have no idea how old this plaid shirt is. I have no memory of when this shirt entered my wardrobe. It’s unlikely that I’ve always had it; that it was the fabric my parents swaddled me in before they sent me in the probe from Kevton to Earth. Improbable, but not not impossible. I’ve always had it, with an asterisk on always. It’s possible this particular plaid shirt is a near-as-I-could-come replacement for an older plaid shirt I had in high school. However it’s also possible that this is the actual shirt I got in high school, since it’s got an American Eagle label, and I certainly haven’t been in an American Eagle, if they still exist, since the second millennium ended. So it’s at least twenty years old, and it could be closer to 35. 

It’s a comfort shirt. It comes out this time of year when it starts to get cold enough around the house to need “another layer.” It probably gets washed once a year, but I wouldn’t count on it. I only wear it for a few minutes at a time, when I step outside to get the mail, or similar errand. Mostly it just hangs there, on that hook in Autumn and Winter, or deeper in the closet for the warmer months. It’s basically a blanky, or a wooby, or a towely, or whatever you called your security item as a child. 

An amazing thing is that as I snapped this picture, I noticed all the other objects in frame that also keep me feeling safe and warm and comforted:

1. The green quilted pillow was made for me by Marsha Nagorsky, and given as a Christmas present more than twenty years ago. She gave a similar one to Jenn Goetz (purple) and Michele (black & white), the one time we were all in one place for a holiday visit. It’s perfect for hugging to my chest, much like Marsha.
2. The pillow is sitting on one of the world’s ugliest ottomans, which has a matching chair, called the “chair of many colors”. My parents footed the bill for the chair/ottoman combo as a 30th birthday present, when Michele and I bought couches to furnish our married living space. The chair is my video gaming chair upon which I sit weekly to play online with Matt, Nate, Jarrett. The ottoman moved into my bedroom when our cat got spayed and needed to spend the night close by. It never left, and if you look at the leg, you can see it’s a favorite scratching post, second only to the chair, which is gradually being turned back into yarn.
3. There are two frames on the wall, which you can barely see in the picture. The larger is a poster-print of a waterfall my wife and I hiked to on our honeymoon in Oregon. Coincidentally, it’s name is Oneonta Falls, named after a town not far from where I attended college. The second frame holds a collage/pinboard of pictures, cards and the program from our wedding. My mom put it together for us.

I am overwhelmed with the flood of warm, safe, loving memories that this one small slice of my world provides tonight, when so very many people have so much fear, and so little comfort and safety in this world.