By Corinne H. Smith
As long as I can remember, my father has used white square
cotton handkerchiefs. He always has one tucked
into the right rear pocket of his pants.
He takes it out regularly throughout the day to blow his nose – or
rather, to give a good honk into it. I
think he hits a low D or E, every time.
When I was growing up, and I “helped” my mother do the
laundry, I first handled my father’s handkerchiefs myself. Each one is a simple 16-inch square that we
ironed and folded into a tidy four-inch pile.
That’s how it would go into his pocket each morning.
The trouble is that once he uses one, it’s not the same. He unfolds it, blows, and then balls up the
material and jams it back into his pocket.
Since this happens multiple times during the day, it’s inevitable that
the whole handkerchief doesn’t make it back into the tight slot. Part of it is usually hanging out of his
pocket. Like the ear of a bunny. Or a goat.
Of course, we enabled this practice when we always put a
fresh pack of white handkerchiefs under the Christmas tree for him each
December. And now that I think of it, why
on earth did we waste time and steam and effort to iron these things, back in
the day? I guess it was just because it
was the ‘60s and ‘70s, and that’s what was expected of us womenfolk. To present a perfectly flat and straight
handkerchief to be placed in a man’s pocket, ready for the first blow. Yikes.
Mom used to get angry and somewhat embarrassed whenever
Daddy would get up to play a piccolo solo at a band concert. There he would be, standing at the edge of
the stage and facing the audience, with part of his white handkerchief waving
from the back pocket of his black dress pants.
My mother would shake her head and groan. I guess she thought my father’s slightly
disheveled appearance would cast a bad light on her as well. I’m not sure it did. I don’t know how many other people even
looked back there when he walked forward.
When he turned around and returned to the flute section, well yes, it
may have been obvious then. Like a flag
at half mast.
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| Daddy & Edna enjoying the annual church picnic, Summer 2012. Note the handkerchief sticking out of his pocket. My mother would have been appalled that someone took this photo. And that I'm posting it online, for all the world to see. Sorry, Mom! |
Now that my father and I are living together again, I’ve
gotten used to seeing the white cotton squares in the laundry basket. I wash them and fold them, but I sure don’t
iron them. What would be the point? They’re going to get messy as soon as he uses
them anyway. And I’ve also learned that
he uses more than one during the course of the day, even though he goes through
boxes of Kleenex rather quickly, too. He
has a whole stack of handkerchiefs in one dresser drawer. At last count, there were about two dozen in
there. The tally sometimes diminishes
after the laundry cycle, though. If one
doesn’t come entirely clean from a standard washing, then it goes into the
trash instead of into his room. Maybe
someday soon we’ll actually have to buy more.
I finally asked him why he uses these white cotton squares. “I have always carried a handkerchief in my back
pocket,” he said. He doesn’t remember a
time when he didn’t have one. He doesn’t
remember the day that he first got one. “Doesn’t
a man always have a handkerchief in his back pocket?” he replied, then answered his own question. “I thought they did.” Yes, Daddy. Evidently, they still do.
