Wednesday, June 20, 2007

T-Shirts

There is a sad day coming. It is very likely that by the end of the year I will have to throw away almost every t-shirt that means something to me. Between working at a plywood mill, having babies and the fact that most of them are at least 10 years old, my precious t-shirts, filled with holes and spit up stains are at the end of their journeys. No more Cascade College Soccer (which I never played,btw), no more Lambda, no more Sierra Bible Camp. It's not that these shirts are cool looking it's what they represent. It's the shirts that reminded me when I was plugging away at sheets of wood that I had some diverse experiences that many people in that mill never had. When I was covered in spit up they reminded me that at one point in my life I was sort of cool and that I was capable of doing other things than changing diapers and nursing babies (not that those things aren't important). And now that I am about to be 31 they are reminding me that it's been a while since I was a college student and a camp counselor. I know that anyone seeing me in these shirts are taking up a fund to replace them but they probably don't know how special they are. I know that there are other shirts waiting to become special to me in the future and I am looking forward to that but no shirts will replace these memories. Maybe I will keep them in a special box and one day they will be vintage.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

When Bryan and I got married, we dedicated one whole drawer to our t-shirts. Both having grown up in the church and having gone through 9 combined years of college left us with a billion camp (go Sierra!!!)and YC shirts, that we couldn't stand to part with. We still own 90% of them and they frankly aren't even wearable anymore. But how do you throw out a shirt that has so many memories and is well over 15 years old? It's like at this point it DESERVES to live till the last thread is unraveled! I'm with you Jenny, I LOVE my old shirts - even if I only wear them to bed!

RoniZee said...

I have those old shirts as well. It's so hard to part with them. I have my Lambda initiation shirt....it's never even been washed (ok so I only wore it once, but still). I have managed to get rid of lots of them, but that one will probably stay a keeper.

I will leave you with these words:

How do I say goodbye to what we had?
The good times that made us laugh
Outweigh the bad.

I thought we'd get to see forever
But forever's gone away
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

I don't know where this road
Is going to lead
All I know is where we've been
And what we've been through.

If we get to see tomorrow
I hope it's worth all the wait
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And I'll take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And I'll take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

lisajo said...

I can empathize. Andy recently tore one of his favorite shirts while on a ladder working on the wretched windows in our house. My mom graciously sewed up the hole, apologizing for how it didn't look very nice. Obviously, she doesn't understand how awesome the shirt was in the first place. Prolonging it's retirement a few more years...

Di said...

My mother in law made us a quilt using many of Brice and my old T-shirts. It is pretty awesome!