Facing up to the truth can be difficult, not least as we get older. This is not always due to the ageing process, where a majority of us are concerned. Such is in the order of things; expected, faced up to, accepted, even with the aches and pains of later years.
As Shakespeare never said, “it is what it is”. (That phrase is said to have originated – according to the New York Times – in an article by a Mr J E Lawrence for The Nebraska State Journal in 1949. Who am I to disagree?)
But it is a truth rarely acknowledged that as a man grows older, so does his width extend. He can struggle for years with accepting that a reality check is indeed necessary where his clothes are concerned, socks excepted. (In this uncertain world it remains a consolation that some few things remain constant: the north star; Kerry football; the dog; socks).
The tragedy is that those beloved jackets, those once hip-hugging pants, jeans – especially the well-worn Wranglers with which so much has been shared (exclusively) – are never going to overcome the shrinkage that has befallen them, thanks to frequent visits to the laundry/washing machine/dry cleaners. Shirts too, though, they rarely survive as long.
As is well known, frequent cleaning causes compression of the weave in all clothes (ahem!) with inevitable consequences. Soon, they don’t fit the bearer anymore, leaving him looking more like a clown from Duffy’s Circus than the sartorially elegant dude he aspires to be and continues to believe he is, despite the evidence of his own eyes, the mirror and every shop window he passes.
Recently, casting a cold eye over my overcrowded wardrobe, and with the ruthlessness of Margaret Thatcher’s dismissing proposals from the New Ireland Forum in 1984, I grabbed once-beloved jackets/jeans/pants and declared “out, out, out!”, piling them all on a chair with the steely resolve of one determined to finally break with old friends suffocating my space.
To ease the heartache, I ensured they would have a good home and brought them to an Irish Cancer Society charity shop where they could raise funds while also providing warmth for a person of lesser girth.
But, there was nothing sweet in the sorrow of our parting.
Sorrow, from from Old English sorg for “grief, regret, pain”.
