A Purgatory of Sunday Clothes

One Sunday, during a visit to my parents, I saw my uncle wearing not only one of my old dress shirts but also one of my ties. The yellow one with spots I used to dislike. I saw him from inside the house through the window, trying to get his tricycle started. He and his family on their way to church.

I used to keep that shirt and tie along with the others, along with the pants, in a drawer upstairs. I knew I wouldn't wear them again. But I kept them still in that purgatory of Sunday clothes. Once, I opened the drawer. Exhumed the dark blue shirt with thin white stripes and the navy blue tie that worked well with it. It was a cousin's wedding. My first time to see the family again after I left the church many years ago. Except for that one occasion, those clothes were mostly stuffed in there, smelling like the wooden casket that swallowed them and the mothballs my mother still dropped in there occasionally.

As my uncle and his family drove past the window, I started asking myself when I may have given those clothes to him. I can't remember. When I left for Los Baños five years ago, I brought a single luggage. Like a snake changing its skin, I promised to buy new clothes to signify a life starting anew.

Now the thought just dawned on me. It must've been my mother who gave my clothes to him. I was incensed at first. Why didn't she ask for my permission? I said.

But then, I imagined my mother opening each drawer of that cabinet weeks after I left. Arriving at that pile of dress shirts, pants, and ties, she must've stared long and hard at them before yielding to the thought that her son will never return. Will never wear them again. Or would outgrow them first before he returns—if ever. She must've remembered how many times she picked each piece out of the laundry basket. How many times she soaked them in the tub. How many times she rubbed them together with her palms. How many times she hung them on the clothesline to dry. How many times she laid each and every one of them over that ironing horse on a Sunday morning.

Those clothes were as much hers as they were mine. And she only did what I couldn't do.