Dear Adele,

My closet is full. It’s small but packed to busting with clothing of various colors and kinds and sizes–mostly cheap crap, like the stuff that so many Americans buy at Ross or TJ Maxx or whatever clearance rack we can find, if we can blast through all the other women, some of whom are like me–desperate to feel good about themselves by buying a pair of pants and a black tee shirt and then walking around in them. The ultimate self-esteem booster, Adele. Really. Going to the grocery store or to work in a new dress and some sandals will make you feel awesome–worthwhile, strong, pretty, capable. It doesn’t take work, or depth, or intelligence. Just throw on a silky skirt and your efforts will have come to fruition.

You should know that I even clean out my closet: A few times a year, I take things I no longer want to the Salvation Army or to the Cancer Society shop, but it doesn’t help. I excavate, but no one could tell (Adele, a metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implicit comparison is made); I clean things out, unpack them and unbury them and get rid of them (between two unlike things that actually have something important in common), but even I do not notice a difference.

And so I despise my closet. I dread opening its door. (Adele, I’m trying not to use the word “hate” because it’s unhealthy and hostile.) I search in the dark for things to wear (no light in the tiny closets of my old house) and I feel around in the dark for the piece of dirty clothing that I know has fallen out of my dirty clothes hamper because it’s so fucking full. And nothing changes.

My holding onto these clothes, Petunia, my closet torment, is not trivial. The way I persecute myself, feeling guilt and shame and remorse over my heavier-than-it-used-to-be body (which works just fine, by the way–it poops, it pees, it breathes, it is free of broken bones and paralyzed muscles), the way I’m forcing myself to live in this dysfunctional space, is not trivial at all. What you need to know is how I arrived at this problem, this problem which is not starvation, not poverty, not criminal, but torturous nonetheless. I arrived here because the clothes in my closet don’t fit me anymore, and I refuse to part with them for the following reasons: I have not enough money for new clothes; I refuse to buy more cheap crap made by someone in Indonesia who is aching for a break and a clean and safe home; and of course the most important reason–I desperately want to fit into my old clothes again. It comes down to this, Adele. To vanity. I am engaging in Wrong Conversation, like so many publications and shows do, when they discuss women in nearly every way–but when they discuss women who don’t get rid of clothes they’ve gained themselves out of, they say things like this: Accept yourself. If you haven’t worn it in a year, get rid of it. Go to the Container Store and organize, organize, organize.

And although I am aware of this and many other Internal Wrong Conversations, I am too conditioned to stop thinking about spring. I want to wear those tank tops that my arms can barely squish into, those blouses that my stil-nursing breasts will stretch to tearing. And I want to wear each of these items with jeans that I cannot pull up past my hips.

Ah, jeans. I have them stacked on a high shelf in my closet–each pair is between 5 and 15 years old. I do not part with them. Those are my Europe Jeans, I say, looking up into the dark, the jeans I wore every day for four months when I backpacked around in the mid-90s. The thing is, I don’t realize but realize at the same time, they are not my Europe Jeans anymore. They are my Closet Jeans. They sit on that shelf and tower into the darkness. I stare at them and then pull on a pair of banana yellow sweat pants that are stained with spit up.

The good news, though, Adele, is this: the spit up that stains my sweat pants is yours, there because I was nursing you, because your tiny digestive system regurgitated what it could not handle. Most all the stains that mar the few pieces of clothing I can still fit into are evidence of you and your brother, your presence, your bodies, your weight. And Adele, you win. I close my closet door. I put on a pair of socks to keep my feet warm–usually bright blue or green, because those are my warmest pairs–and then I put on a bra that smells like sweat because I haven’t had time to wash it, and then I put on a stained but clean pale orange tee shirt, and I nurse you, I play puppets with your brother, I take you to the park and forget about all the stains on my clothes and my heavy ass that makes me wonder if you came to term in there instead of in my belly. I traipse around the house and the yard, chasing after you and your brother, and in my head I have the Right Conversations. They go like this: Time to feed your daughter and then wipe the counter and fold her clothes and put them away. Isn’t Adele beautiful? Isn’t Ian generous and bright? When will he use the potty, oh when when when? I wonder what he will be like when he’s eight, nine, thirteen? And isn’t this a lovely

lovely

lovely

lovely

day?

I love you.

Mommy