Letting Go & Giving It Away!

Yesterday I took a pile of my old clothes to Buffalo Exchange in San Francisco to sell for cash or get a store credit to get more "new" used clothes.  If you haven't visited The Exchange lately, it's a wonderful place to people-watch, and also see what fashion is hip and cool in the City.

Among the items I placed before the beautiful young buyer was the leather jacket my boyfriend bought me on my 30th birthday at a fancy North Beach boutique. It cost $400 then.  Yesterday it had zero value and she rejected it. 

When I asked her why, she replied "the cut is oversize--it's too wide, puffy, and hangs like loose drape instead of today's trimmer, more fitted styles."

I could take it back home and hang in my closet for another 30 years,  or donate it to charity.  I gave it to charity.

When I left the store with $28 in cash for the items she did buy, I must confess I felt a little queasy. There was a sense of the "unbearable lightness of being" to quote Milan Kundera.  Or maybe it was more the unbearable lightness of time, time passing by.  

The leather jacket was my oldest piece of clothing and maybe my most sentimental.  It was also hard to let go of the very fun and funky black and tan animal print jacket with hot pink faux fur that I wore at The Burning Man Festival in 2007 and 2008. But my partner said it fit  "too small"...OMG, have I expanded that much since 2008?  

Later I spent the $28 she paid out on a new blanket, a cute "Necessary Objects" A-line skirt and black top I found at the flagship Goodwill Store on VanNess.  Then I ate potato latkes with sour cream and apple sauce and drank a Miller High Life beer at Max's Cafe at Opera Plaza.  Then we went to see the new movie "Still Mine" .

Still Mine concerns an 87 year-old man who decides to build a new house for his wife of 60 years because she is demented and their old house on two stories doesn't work for them anymore.  His wife fell down the stairs and miraculously did not break a bone.  The story concerns a man's love for his ailing wife, his dogged determination to not give up despite his age, and his confrontation with authorities who want to stop his right to be self-reliant and self-determined.

Still Mine is "Amour" with considerably more muscle.   And more heart and soul than most movies will deliver these days.  Most of the people in the audience were much older than my partner and me.  We were aware we were the youngest people in the audience. 

Still Mine is watching a series of moments when people have to let go of everything.  My old leather jacket from an ex-boyfriend or my funky Burning Man costume seem so small by comparison.  By the end of the day, I hardly felt the pinch at all and opened my closet once more to see what I can take to the Exchange today.

It occurs to me that I might as well get used to letting go and giving it away.  It's excellent preparation for the bigger things that lay ahead.