The Mitten Clip Mutiny [ by Charles Coe]

It was only a glove. A single child’s glove lying in the middle of the sidewalk. But it sent me rocketing more than fifty years into the past, to a winter in the early 60's and my family’s kitchen. Mother was stirring a pot of soup when I walked in to confess that I’d lost yet another glove—the second of the winter.

I was an absent-minded kid (not much has changed), constantly losing track of gloves, glasses, hats, you name it. (Everything but books. I could tell you exactly where any of the two or three books I was reading at the moment happened to be.) Money was tight in our family; buying another pair of gloves wasn’t going to keep food off the table, but still it was another thing item for a struggling family’s budget. Mother put down the soup spoon . “Maybe we should get you some mitten clips.” But I shook my head. “I’m not wearing mitten clips. Mitten clips are for babies.”

I was a very well-behaved as a child. Never got in fights, played hooky, or talked back to my parents. But here I was, committing an act of mutiny. I usually stayed under the radar of the jerkier kids, but I knew that if I showed up at school with mitten clips I might as well have written “Tease Me” on my forehead with a laundry marker. So I took my stand: No Mitten Clips. I think she might have seen some of this in my face. She just sighed and turned back to her pot of soup. “When your father gets home he’ll take you out to pick up a new pair.”

Some people have a hard time dealing with the pressures of parenthood; it doesn’t take much to bring them to a boil and turn a child into collateral damage in their lonely war with the world. I once saw a woman in a mall food court screaming at a kid whose great sin had been to knock over a cup of soda. The child just sat with head down as the woman ranted and angrily swabbed the table with a fistful of paper napkins. My mother had her own share of personal demons and I was never sure when one would come up for air, but this time things worked out okay.

I hope the parent of the kid who dropped that glove on the sidewalk can shrug it off as well. Ruffle the kid’s hair, maybe make a little joke that ends with a hug.

After all, it was only a glove.

Comments

[Tony Press]

This is a sweet thing to read on a February afternoon.

[Charles Coe]

Tony, thanks a lot. I appreciate that.