A portal to memory that fits like a glove
/The Boston Globe
Beverly Beckham
The gloves are my rabbit hole. Black cotton with perfect double seams stitched along each finger, triple stitched along the thumb, and scalloped at the wrist. Daytime gloves. Joe Berry gave them to me along with a mid-length pair, white cotton, still held together by a piece of thick thread, formal gloves, the kind you’d wear to a prom.
No reason for this gift. No birthday. No occasion. “I knew you would like them,” he said simply, knowing me, knowing that my mother sold hats and gloves at Wethern’s in Quincy Square when I was a girl and she was decades younger than I am now. Knowing that these gloves would remind me of her. And make me smile.
But they did more.
They were nestled in a glove box, even the packaging authentic, not a flimsy for-all-occasions-gift-box from the Dollar Tree Store, but a sturdy thing with solid sides made specifically for gloves.
I hadn’t seen a glove box in years, not since my mother, who also sold hat boxes, slipped them into a customer’s shopping bag. So I didn’t recognize the shape. I opened my gift with not a clue of what was inside.
And there they were, stowaways from another time.
I sat in the dark cafe and looked at them.
It’s not as if I hadn’t seen a pair of gloves in 50 years. I have. Winter gloves. Ski gloves. Long, white, fancy polyester gloves I bought for my kids and then for their kids when they chose to be some princess on Halloween. But not gloves like these. Not the real thing.
I touched them and felt cotton as smooth as suede. I ran my fingers along their fingers. I breathed in their department store smell. And then I took the black ones out of the box and put them on.
There’s an art to putting on gloves. If they are new, you slowly squeeze your hand into them, easing your fingers into their fingers and tugging until they fit. And then with your opposite hand you press down between each finger until the glove feels like a second skin. Right glove. Then left glove. I felt the pinch of my ring. And remembered: You shouldn’t wear rings with gloves.
Even before I looked at my hands in these black, cotton gloves, even before I saw myself young, I felt young. I felt transported. I was remembering the front door at Wethern’s that opened onto Hancock Street, how it stuck a little and how it squeaked. I was remembering the gloves that were in a file of drawers near the door and near the whimsies, hats that were mostly veils. I was remembering the noise from the street, cars cruising, trucks idling, the tinkling of the cash register, my mother’s voice and her laugh.
I said to Joe and to my friend, Elaine, as I held out my gloved hands, “I feel 14.” I should have said, “I am 14.” Because I was. The gloves made this happen. They hid my old hands. I didn’t see who I am now. I saw and felt who I was when dress gloves and hats were a part of my life. And I inhabited a slice of time, minutes in a hat shop that doesn’t exist any more in the company of a mother who doesn’t exist either, not physically, not in this world, but who, when she was here, wore hats and gloves and made me want to wear hats and gloves, too. And I felt ageless. And divine.
There’s an art to removing gloves, too. You tug at the fingertips, little finger first, then ring finger, progressing to the thumb. It’s deliberate, this tugging. In old movies, a character might make an important point while removing a glove, the final tug to all four fingers punctuating all that was said.
I put on the gloves and go down a rabbit hole. I take off the gloves and come up again. That night in a dark cafe that’s what I did. Off and on. Off and on. Memory tugged and time was stilled. And for that time, I was 14 in a hat shop in Quincy Square with my mother again.
Beverly Beckham can be reached at bev@beverlybeckham.com.
