An Unexpected Love For Hand-Me-Downs
I dropped an entire garbage bag stuffed full of used baby clothes off at a girlfriend’s house this afternoon. As I drove to her house, car overburdened with three kids stuffed into the back of my Honda Accord, I was taken aback by a sadness which crept inside me the closer I got to her house. It was just used clothes. Clothes that had filled my closets and cluttered my house and were no longer useful as my girls had grown out of all of them. Our house has become an overflowing shrine of children’s paraphernalia and the act of purging the unnecessary is as pleasurable as it is cathartic. And yet, as I set the heavy white bag down on the porch, I was surprised by the solid mass of sadness weighing down my heart. How, instead of the life-giving sense of getting rid of stuff no longer needed, somehow it felt like loss. I couldn’t understand the emotional weight accompanying this supposedly joyful purge.
I grew up as the youngest of four siblings, three of us being girls. We lived on one income, my mom having stayed at home while my Dad worked. Mom was famous for being able to stretch a dollar. She died her own hair (or got us to help do it with her as we got older). She cleaned her own house (or, again, got us to do it as we got older). She made her own jewelry and I swear didn’t buy a new piece of clothing for a decade. She could feed her family of six even with an empty fridge. We never ate out or traveled anywhere we couldn’t drive.
The cornerstone of any good penny-pincher with multiple children, however? The hand-me-down. And my mom was the expert.
My sisters would get new dresses for Easter or Christmas, dresses that would show up on my body the following year’s holidays. Family pictures show everyone smiling, gap-toothed and awkward in adolescents. Hair styled in fashionable 80’s side ponytails and braids and matching head bands. My sisters in each new dress for the year, me in the dresses they had been wearing the years previous. We looked adorable. And I hated it.
I hated that my sisters we were worth new clothing and I was not. I felt cheated, underrated. Unimportant. I knew I was loved, but if I was respected as much as they were, I would have been given my own new dresses.
My husband and I are now raising three children of our own. Only now have I come to fully appreciate what my mom was capable of and how she sacrificed for us. And why we always were dressed in hand-me-downs.
Even more, my sisters have saved clothing from their daughters to give to me. Ruffled onesies with pink bows and tiny flowers. Lavender jump suits lined with cream fabric dotted with tiny purple flowers and a matching shirt made in the same flowery fabric. Hand-knitted cream beanies with matching cream rose buds. Fuzzy footed jammies worn by children who fly down the stairs in the morning with crazy hair and bad breath, who start your day with hugs and screams and chaos and love. Spring dresses and Fall sweaters and tiny black shoes covered in sparkles and big giant bows for Christmas.
My oldest sister had four daughters, my other sister has one, and I have two. Seven daughters. Seven girls all passing down the same set of clothing. And I couldn’t think of anything more precious.
Hand-me-downs are a time capsule, a way to remember the past. When your nieces were that small. When you held them in your lap as they slept. Now they’re taller than you. And your daughters are wearing that same dress you snuggled those now-teenagers in. The memories break my heart while bringing a smile to my face. And the opportunity to remember those moments, to relive them with my own daughters, fills my heart with peace and joy and sadness that my nieces are so big. And brings smiles to the faces of my sisters when they see their nieces wearing the clothes once worn by their own daughters.
The clothes have dressed our babies for Christmas, Easter, church, a spring day, a summer’s eve. Family pictures, trips to the park, play dates. The clothes are preserved, like our children, in family photos which are quickly turning to heirlooms. And the clothes, hand-me-downs I used to despise, are tangible pieces of the past, living memories to be recreated, reborn, made new on each new daughter.
It shouldn’t have surprised me, then, why dropping off that bag full of hand-me-downs on my girlfriend’s porch would have felt so heavy. My daughters are the last of the grandbabies in the family. There will be no more babies until our children start having children. A new generation waiting to be born. I’ve kept a few pieces I just couldn’t let go of. A few pieces—worn by my daughters—to dress their own daughters in. Living memories to be kept alive, within the family. But there is no way to keep all of it. And no point. Other mamas need clothes and I need to empty my closets. And so I’m passing along a garbage bag full of some of my most cherished memories—the memories of my children. And I pray they bless this new family like they have blessed mine.
The garbage bag contained a life. My life. My family’s life. All written out in clothing. Clothing worn on seven girls. Now headed to number eight. I hope it keeps going. I hope those clothes make it to nine or ten or eleven girls. Girls who are part of those who have gone before them. Girls whose stories started long before they did. Girls who will keep the stories going.
I never in my wildest dreams could have been so sentimental about hand-me-downs as a kid. I’m sure I never would have appreciated it even if someone had shared it with me. But I will share it with my daughters. As they grow and realize some their clothing was worn by someone else, I will tell them the privilege they have of having a family. A family that loves them enough to save, store, and pass along their clothing. A family that went before them. A family that relives memories through them. The clothes, and the girls who first wore them, were cherished. And those hand-me-downs represent not a lack of thought to my child, but a thoughtfulness towards them, a reliving of memories, a testament to the swiftness of time. The clothes, which mean nothing, mean everything when attached to our memories. Living memories worn on the bodies of my daughters.
How much I appreciate my mother, my sisters, my memories. My hand-me-downs. And the hand-me-downs I am blessed to share. I can only pray the clothes I dress my daughters in will show them how truly loved they are. How important they are to me. How irreplaceable these children of mine are—children who are dressed in hand-me-downs.