Towels

My first full time job, my first chance to escape my father, I moved to Kalkaska Michigan. I was intensely lonely, without the ability to cope. The dreadful pull of my parents' support, with attendant abuse, left me torn and empty. The afternoon shift in a small town where I knew no one, and lacked the ability to make friends, ground away my resolve to live alone.

A young woman, and I don't remember how I met her, a pharmacy student, took me under her wing. Brought me along to family dinners, and to their cottage by Starvation Lake. I remember going canoeing with her at dusk, under fog, watching the bats swoop around us, catching their dinner.

Her family used beach towels for everything, delighting me with the color and generosity of enough terrycloth. I don't remember any of their names. But their kindness lives with me after... well, nearly forty years now. In my neediness, my callow youth, it never occurred to me that one day, I would want to tell them how much they meant to me.

The only good gift of the first wedding, were large, ugly brown striped, but absorbent bath towels. So, when I escaped that relationship, I bought beach towels for myself. In better colors. I've done so ever since.

In my parents' house, the towels were small, pale and thin. The sheets old and pilled. The love scarce and synthetic.

In our home, the towels are bright and thick and large - beach towels. The cats are beloved. The sheets smooth, the pyjamas knit and soft.



Stay hoopie, froods.