This essay took first place for "creative non-fiction" in the 2011 Royal Palm Literary Awards!
I don't know where the mink stole originally came from, or who it had belonged to before it ended up in my godmother's closet. But there were a great many things in Aunt Mary's apartment that I had either walked past over the years while visiting or had never seen at all.
Amber earrings, probably from her trip to Russia? News to me. A commemorative glass from the 1958 Kentucky Derby? I nabbed that immediately as we took inventory of the things in her apartment, preparing for the inevitable estate sale that followed her funeral. We both loved horses. She got me my first horseback riding lessons, in fact.
The full-length fake lynx coat in the hall closet? I'd helped her buy that coat at an upscale shop in Brookfield, Wisconsin on a bitterly cold day two decades earlier. I hadn't seen her wear it in years. But what on earth was my maiden aunt doing with a mink stole?
As we sorted and vacuumed and displayed and scrubbed and polished in preparation for the sale, the mink came out of the shadows and into the daylight. It was soft and clean and in good condition, but had obviously changed hands several times. The name monogrammed into the lining didn't belong to anyone in the family, so my best guess was that my mother or grandmother must have picked it up for a song at someone else's estate sale years before and brought it home "just because." Perhaps Prince Charming would come calling with an invitation to the ball, and it paid to be prepared. I've never lived in an income bracket where the words "I brought home a mink stole today" would fit in a conversation about shopping, and I can't think of anyone else in the family that applied to either.
So the mink got priced and tagged, and attractively staged where it would be noticed by foot traffic between the dining room and the kitchen on the sale day. A lot of things walked out of the house by the end of the day, I was happy to report, many of them pieces of heavy furniture we were glad to be rid of. But the mink was still hanging there at the end of business, plush and furry and forlorn, and looking completely out of place in a moderately middle-class second-story apartment in Chicago. Even the fire-sale price slashing we did right toward the end of the sale didn't get it to move.
And so the mink stayed on the premises a while longer, back in a closet, as most of the other remaining unsold clothing got donated to charity and the knick knacks were farmed out for sale on commission. Hopelessly languishing out of its proper social bracket, the stole managed to combine the appearance of a haughty society matron in humble surroundings with the touchable, comforting feel of Lassie. A few months later, when my German cousin Ingrid and her husband came to Chicago to visit, we held a family gathering of live music and reminiscence at my mother's apartment, and somehow the mink stole came out for an impromptu modeling session. I finally brought it home with me to Wisconsin, where it took up an entirely new languishing position in the back of MY closet.
Well, Prince Charming didn't come calling in a carriage with an invite to dinner at the castle, but a friend of mine who owns a set of white tie and tails came through with an invite to the Viennese Ball at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. I'd attended the ball for the first time the year before, with the man in my life on my arm in a rented tux and a pearl tie tack, and we'd enjoyed ourselves enough to make a second appearance this year a done deal. And with the weather forecast calling for snow snowers and temps in the low thirties that night, what's a woman in a strapless gown and opera length gloves who's channeling her inner Hapsburg empress to use for a wrap?
Out came the mink. Now, I'm not a "real fur" person at all. Ever since my first dog got her foot caught in a leg-hold trap thirty years ago while we were out exploring in the woods, I've had a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of fur coats and fur stoles and fur anything that involves killing an animal and displaying its fur to broadcast status and fashion. There was blood on both of us by the time I got her free. I remember Aunt Mary and I were both very pleased a long time ago when we located that faux lynx coat during our shopping expedition. She was an animal lover too.
On the other hand, I reasoned as I worked on my outfit for this year's ball, I was doing a lot more recycling these days in general. More cardboard and paper, more plastic, more metal, more styrofoam. My "recyclables" in fact often outweigh the trash in my house. And, I thought, the minks that made up this stole most likely died about sixty years ago. It's not like they were part of any viable stream of commerce after the Kennedy administration.
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So...the mink came with me to the ball. I recycled the opera gloves from last year, came up with a pair of rhinestone and faux sapphire earrings that I've had for a good fifteen years and have NO idea where they originated, bought a sequinned evening purse at a second hand shop, and found a clearance-priced dress on a bridal website. And, just as I did last year, I made much of the fact that my name in German comes out to be "Maria Theresa," the Hapsburg empress for whom the main ballroom was named, and even danced a polka with the lovely gent who comes to this event dressed up as Emperor Franz Josef.
I think that if Aunt Mary (who taught AP Modern European History for decades) could have lived to see the pictures of me with the mink and Franz Josef, she'd have definitely approved. But she'd have to stop laughing first.
