The hideous sweat shirt I can’t throw out

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:07:00 +0000

When I sold my deceased parents' small row home in Philadelphia and moved to New York 22 years ago, I took very little with me. My husband and I were beginning our marriage in hospital housing where he was a resident. He had already decorated the place with his leopard sofa, platform bed, kilim and an inherited mid-century desk. There was room for me in his heart, but not for my parents' rickety formica kitchen table.

I knew that once I settled in New York, I would become assimilated into his family -- a large, Jewish, Ivy League-educated, highly bonded collection of people with no shortage of opinions or emotions. By contrast, I had two brothers, each addicted to his own brand of drugs and a widowed sister. My mother had gotten as far as fifth grade; my father, who died of alcoholic cirrhosis, was a graduate of trade school. I was ready to move on and begin a new life with nothing but a stuffed suitcase.

Salon.com > Patricia Kenet

The hideous sweat shirt I can’t throw out