Many of you already know, but many of you don’t because you were raised by a goddamn pack of hyenas, but dressers are a hallmark of civilized life.
Dressers. You know, like, the things with drawers that you put your clothes in, dude.
It don’t matter if all you have in your dresser is a bunch of 20-year-old concert t-shirts, your underwear of choice (if any) and some holey socks- if you even have a dresser, e.g. something besides milk crates and boxes to put your clothes in- you are therefore civilized.
If not, you may be homeless, or a college student, or simply choose to live like a homeless college student /animal because “yer clothes need to be FREE man! Free! Like, no constraints of wooden pseudo-categorization and subliminal attachment to class and status, man. “ *
This brings up a good point. Rich kids, aka trust-funders, who don’t USE their dressers as an act of “rebellion” against Mummy and Daddy don’t count. They HAVE dressers, so therefore, unfortunately, they belong to civilized society. Just because they leave all their clothes on the floor, clean and dirty, doesn’t mean there isn’t a 700 year old mahogany family heirloom just begging to hold their designer undies.
However, for more than a year now, two or more people in this small family of mine have not had dressers. We sold my daughter’s changing table/dresser last summer at our garage sale, thinking we’d immediately replace it with something better. We put her clothes in the cute little cloth-lined wicker baskets she already had, plus boxes I snagged from work. Months went by.
My husband hasn’t had a dresser since I forced him to give it away, during the move from our old house to this one, because it was an ancient, ‘70’s era hand-me-down from my parents and I was trying to clear the bad ju-ju. We thought we’d get him one, or get us both a big one to share, almost immediately. You know what happened. Months went by. He stored his underwear first on the floor, and then in boxes, on the floor of my daughter’s closet, our closet being too tiny to accommodate his stuff.
I was the only one with a dresser for a long time. And it was tiny, by today’s standards, and to my eyes, hideous. It had belonged to my mother when she was in high school, so its original provenience was Lincoln, Nebraska, the 1950’s. It was a maple stained, possibly even maple wood 4-drawer little number, of a style popular in the mid-century. Not too “modern” looking, but not too old-fashioned either. The drawer pulls were desperately trying to be Colonial, or Federalist, and even had a fake patina of age on their cheap brass veneers. Two of them had committed suicide sometime in the 90’s, so thankfully I only had to bear the ugliness of the other two.
It had gone through at least 5 college-era moves with me, and had the scratches and stains to prove it. For a long time it was my night stand, and I was happy to use it as that since the tomato crate I had for that purpose was busted, and too small. In my 20’s, I was grateful to have it, since most of the rest of my furniture consisted of the aforementioned crates, and a futon. I couldn’t afford anything else, and it even looked “cute” with a table runner thrown over it and afternoon sunlight hitting my jewelry case/cigar box just right. In my 30’s, I still had the damn thing, still couldn’t afford to replace it, and was no longer speaking to my parents. I wanted the thing dead, gone, or set on fire. Many were the times when I contemplated leaving it in the alley to rot a good five minutes before the local scavengers picked it up. Many were the trips to Goodwill and Salvation Army where I very nearly gave the thing away. Even to replace it with an equally hideous, formica-coated-particle board off-gassing relic from the 70’s would have been better, because it wouldn’t have all the emotional baggage of my abusive family.
Now that I near 40, and am properly medicated, my heart is turning towards healing rather than bitterness. My focus is not so much on revenge, or reparations (which will never happen) but on transformation. Mostly out of curiosity, as in; seeing how it would make me feel, I decided that instead of donating the thing (when we NEED dressers, hence, stupid) or setting it on fire, or chopping it up with my landscaping axe, I would refinish the thing for my daughter. Cover up all the scratches and water stains with white paint, put some handsome “Restoration Hardware” style silver knobs on it- and voila- maybe it wouldn’t heal the relationship with my family, but it might heal my relationship with IT, and all hand-me-down furniture.
And this transformation thing- it does invite me. I’ve managed to transform my relationship to Disney movies as my daughter now watches and loves them. Yes, me, the so-called “raging feminist with a Marxist agenda” (whatever the fuck that means.) Maybe it’s the medication, again, but as I watch Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and even the Barbie versions of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker (which are, seriously, not that bad) - I realize they’re all about transformation. And that is not a bad message at all. Any little girl can be, or already IS a princess. Kindness and love are tremendously powerful. Opening you r heart and your mind can change the world. It’s really not about the dresses and tiaras, although the outfits are a fabulous, visual and tactile metaphor for the transformation that has taken place inside the characters.
It’s a daily struggle for me to transform myself from the wretched victim of abuse that I was, to the fabulous babe I know I’m destined to be. I want this dresser to be the visual symbol of fabulousness that came from wretched circumstances. The ugly duckling transformed to a swan. The silk purse made out of a sow’s ear. The love I feel for my daughter, made manifest. A reminder that Love (capital L) is so powerful, it can reach back generations and transform abusive narcissism into supportive, nurturing, unconditional, beauteous, immortal, love.
We also might paint cowgirls on it.
We also might paint cowgirls on it.
