The Tamesis
I had the urge to keep anything—and everything—that my mother had given me. Hell, I keep her shopping lists, which she scrawled on notecards (tuna, lettuce, coconut water) and signed with her signature lipstick blot. But her hand-me-downs were the real problem: Sweaters from a consignment store riddled with wormholes. The last time I wore these leather Harley-Davidson boots, ten years ago, the backs of my ankles were chewed up. Hardcore ankle boots are now dehydrated and wrinkled. All of this is marinating in the back of my closet.
I ask this on the eve of Mother’s Day, but this hoarding syndrome doesn’t just apply to mom’s abandoned stuff. This can happen to anyone we are related to or feel close to. Who hasn’t received a sweater that they will never wear? We stuff it in a drawer and forget about it until the giver asks us why we aren’t wearing it. As Sweater sat and sat, the guilt grew. This is a vicious cycle. Whether retail or second-hand, these unwanted gifts take up not only physical space but also emotional space.
Being the good (neurotic) daughter I am, I contacted professionals for help. Psychologist Carolyn Meyer, ” fashion psychologytold me that our guilt in these situations doesn’t necessarily have to do with whether we like a gifted piece of clothing, but rather what it represents. “When a mother passes something on, she’s providing more than just fabric; she’s providing continuity, a tangible connection between her identity and your identity,” she said. “This is why rejection can be emotionally taxing and hurtful to her, and why giving it up later can provoke a daughter or son to feel a disproportionate amount of guilt.”
when we say goodbye Are we telling her that we don’t care about those three pieces of cashmere our mom threw at us the last time we came home? I called fellow writer Plum Sykes, the fashion fairy godmother across the pond and mother of two teenage girls, for advice. Sykes (who is definitely not the real Emily) tells the harrowing story of trying to dump Nina Ricci on her college-age children. “The chiffon dress, light cream, absolutely beautiful. On Sunday I said to Úrsula, ‘Ussi, do you want to take this back to Paris for art school?'” She said she needed something for summer. She said, ‘Mom, this is kind of like Y2K. ‘”
How horrible! Was Sykes hurt by her daughter’s Richie rejection? “Well, I don’t want the damn Y2K problem either, that’s why I’m trying to get rid of it!” Plum doesn’t like the thing anyway, and it just so happens that the daughter is the closest thing to a charity shop.
My friend, the writer Nicolaia Rips, has a name for this phenomenon: She calls her daughter’s deposit a “soft trash can.” Little did Plum know that simply offering up her early ’00s chiffon would leave a lasting mark on the teenage Urusla. “These objects take on symbolic meaning and become containers of memory and attachment. It’s psychological essentialism,” Meyer said. “Its irreplaceability lies in its very nature: the object was worn by the mother. That is more important than the object itself.”
This situation, dear reader, requires setting some boundaries; it’s time to learn the art of saying no. First, understand where your loved one’s unloading comes from. Is the gift a crocheted scarf that your great-grandmother made from one of her own goats, then smuggled out of the motherland and passed down in the family for decades? Or a bag of tattered J. Brand jeans that your mom has no intention of giving to Goodwill? It’s up to you to decipher the matrilineal “dump.”
