Giving and receiving
My most precious item of clothing is a crimson-colored Minnie Mouse t-shirt. I obtained it at the first clothing swap I went to, when I was five years old. In a swap, participants bring clothing that they no longer need or want to someone's house, and everyone "shops" for free new clothing.
The trick is to hold one with people of relatively the same size, and when I was five and my mom and her friends were 40, nary a sock fit me. The Disney shirt that I found went down to my ankles. I wore it to sleep every night as a badge of my adulthood and an affirmation that I was "one of the ladies."
By the time I became a Jewish adult, I had to wear pajama pants with the t-shirt to keep me warm. When I visit my parents today and find it in the corner of my childhood dresser, Minnie's shirt rests snugly around my thighs.
Earlier this year, though, I really was "one of the ladies" when several of my friends from the Jewish Organizing Initiative, a Boston-based fellowship program rooted firmly in tikkun olam, repairing the world, hosted their own clothing swap. We recycled our old garments for free, thereby helping the environment and our wallets.
As a group of women in our early 20s, we were transitioning from college and even adolescent attire to professional wear. We were looking for dress pants and Polo shirts, not dresses and pajama tops. And rather than swimming in all of the clothing that I had tried on nearly 20 years ago, some of the items were too small on me.
When I visited my cousin on a kibbutz years ago, I quizzed him about the communal nature of his lifestyle and home. Wouldn't it be wonderful, I thought, if no money existed and each person just took what he or she needed?
At the first sight of all of this beautiful clothing, however, I realized why the rest of the world (and most of Israel today) has not morphed into a kibbutz-style way of living. I wanted to take all of the clothing for myself! So I began placing a few prized items in an unassuming corner of the hallway until the hostess proposed that we sort through everything before claiming any of it. We're not vultures or anything, right? Right.
So we sorted and we searched and we sized up and we squealed. We walked out with new garments in our hands and our old garments in new hands, or en route to a women's shelter.
We didn't save the world that night, but we did do our small part to repair it. We reused clothing and gave away clothing. We bonded socially and sartorially. We saved on gas to the mall. We saved on money spent at the mall. We cleaned out our closets, literally and figuratively. We helped each other to prepare, and look good, for our next stage in life. And as for Minnie? Well, some things are only meant to be swapped once.
Elana Kieffer works in development at Hebrew SeniorLife. She lives in Somerville.
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