I need to buy some new undies. Several pairs reveal a parting of ways between the elastic and the cotton fabric and, as my mother used to say, what if you were taken to hospital and were wearing those? As a child I had no real idea what she meant. Like when I had my appendix out? Is there special hospital underwear? But like a puppy I picked up on the tone of voice. Shame. It would be shameful to have decrepit underpants viewed by… well, by anyone. I remember her repairing her own nylon undergarments, sitting by the window where the light was best, bending over the needle and thread. It was a necessity; she had no income of her own and the only way to purchase personal items was by putting a few pence aside from the weekly housekeeping. That scrimping and saving was preferable to the stressful, yet ultimately inevitable, conversation with my father about increasing the housekeeping money. Though conversation isn’t the right word. Inquisition. Interrogation. Ritual humiliation. Any and all of those.
Last week I threw a pair in the bin. It felt odd, uncomfortable, profligate. A kind of betrayal. There was even some annoyance that I couldn’t think of an alternative. Who, nowadays, has a bag of cleaning cloths behind the laundry door? No way I’d be offering my discarded underwear to the cleaning lady who visits once a fortnight. Mum, I wish you could see the look of distaste, repugnance even, as I reveal we have a cleaner. Once a fortnight, I plead in explanation of this bourgeois indulgence. But back to the smalls. (British vernacular, commonly referring to undergarments, in case you were wondering.) They are easily purchased at the supermarket, and are periodically on special just like sausages or cucumbers. It feels odd creating a new item on the shopping app I use each week. Undies—male, large. I like to group the list into sections that match my route through the supermarket but where does underwear sit? Is it near the food containers? Or next to the batteries? Maybe I’ll put it at the end, so searching for them will be like a victory lap before heading to the finish line of the checkout.
They probably have socks as well, and I need those too. That’s much more annoying because not long ago I bought half a dozen pairs in two packs of three, or a six sock bundle if you are following the arithmetic. Twelve new items of sockery just a few months old. But already several have developed holes in the vicinity of the big toe. How can that be? Didn’t socks used to last until you grew out of them? Clearly not any more. Already a couple of pairs have been binned, with all the furtive guilt that entails. In a faded snapshot I see my mother sitting in the lounge room, next to the standard lamp. On an occasional table sits her battered sewing basket, in her lap a ball of wool. She holds a pock-marked wooden darning tool. Just this pair, Allan? she asks. My father’s head appears briefly from behind the newspaper. Yes, he nods, but also one of my business shirts. The top pocket seam has torn. She mumbles assent, and inserts the darning mushroom into the sock. I’ll do the shirt tomorrow, she says, when the light is better.