Setting Free Feathers and Furs
written by: Pamela Ebel
I stood before the closet in my home office. I hadn’t needed to use anything in it for five years. In front of me was a morass of hanging objects, hats and purses piled high on the shelf above and two cardboard boxes peeking out from under long coats.
This was the fifth closet I had tackled in three weeks, but it would prove much more of a challenge for me.
After thirty-eight years in the same house, my husband and I were moving to a new home. Deciding which items would follow us versus those that wouldn’t because they were deemed to exist only by unseen chains of memories and familiarity no longer relevant was fraught with uncertainty. The decisions were made harder by longtime friends with opinions about items that should travel with what they called “The Museum.”
With the Act of Sale finalized, the purging and packing had begun in earnest. So, I stood in front of another closet staring into my past. As I pulled out the coats, a jumble of bright, sequined-covered silk evening gowns tumbled off of their crushed hangers.
There were blues the color of the ocean and some the color of blue found in peacock feathers. There were gold and classic black dresses that Marilyn Monroe would have envied. A jade green beauty with no back and a slit up one side slid out, revealing two gowns with black velvet tops and diaphanous floor-length skirts of gold silk taffeta and netting. I remember getting both, several years apart, because I could see Grace Kelly swirling on the dance floor in them.
Then my favorite dress, next to my wedding dress, appeared. It was a bright red, floor-length gown, with exquisite beadwork on the bodice and the epaulet-style sleeves. I had discovered red silk, sequined heels that matched perfectly.
Several more beauties, short and long, continued to appear until I had about twenty of them. I knew some would think how wasteful, or how rich, or how I must have been. But the truth is they either came from used clothes stores or JCPenney’s. And being my mother’s daughter, the most I ever spent was $40 for the red dress.
I wore them to our annual anniversary parties, social galas that required my professional presence, and when Glenn Miller’s Big Band rolled through town and played the Blue Room.
I put them in piles on the floor. I had three very different friends that I knew would find someone to make good use of these wonderful gowns. These women would never have purchased and worn any of these gowns, and now, like me, they were past the point where one wears a backless dress with a slit up the side. Well, unless you are Cher, Diana Ross, or Tina Turner. But I put the dresses into large black garbage bags until I decided who would get which one.
Finally, I spied a large silk bag on the shelf next to the hats and purses. As I tugged on it, a shower of feathers and fur flowed out, covered my head, and slid down onto the floor. I sneezed and pushed them away from my face.
I stared down at the pile and realized that they were two feather boas. One was a champagne blonde ostrich feather number that my first husband carted home at Christmas time after several bourbon and cokes at a local dress store’s annual “Men’s Shopping Night Out.” The other was a beautiful black ostrich feather boa that a long-time friend gave me because ‘It looks like you.’
Looking closely, I saw the beady eyes of a classic mink boa from the 1940s that belonged to my husband’s grandmother. Next to it was the exquisite red fox tail boa that my own mother conned me into purchasing years before when she was visiting from California one Christmas. The heat and humidity had caused the fur to separate, and parts of the tails had fallen off, and the feathers were molting.
But I picked each one up and twirled around the floor. Then I put them in a separate bag, to whom they would go to be determined later, satisfied knowing they would have new homes.
I smiled as the woman who had worn all those wonderful items when she was much younger and thinner finished packing, took one more look into the closet and a past that existed only in dreams, closed the door and set free the Feathers and Furs.
NOTE:
Based on the Prompt – Breaking The Chain
- Setting Free Feathers and Furs - August 7, 2026
- The Lightness of Bones - May 28, 2026
- Sipping with Queens and Angels - April 2, 2026
