“Brooklyn”

Squibs & Blurbs

by Jerry Zimmerman

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—3/15/10—It’s not easy giving up something you love.

It could be anything. In my case, I’m talking about a beautiful, warm, soft, envelopingly-heavy, blood-red, hooded sweatshirt, emblazoned with one shamanistic message—BROOKLYN. I found it somewhere years ago at a ridiculously low price and have worn it ever since as my go-to clothing choice for every venue you can imagine.

It had the right stuff. It fit me, already a major accomplishment in ready-made clothing, since I am not a ready-made guy, being built from co-mingled short and strong parts that don’t add up to any manufacturer’s idea of a size with a label on it. The material was both heavy and soft, a sensual mating that fit my intuitive apparel soul. The color was an unusual red: deep and vibrant; soothing not screeching.

And it said BROOKLYN! My Love-Of-My-Life wife was from Brooklyn and the hoodie had the magic of wrapping me in that connection. Everything strong and smart and savvy and recklessly beautiful in her seemed to be in that talisman of a word for me—and in that sweatshirt.

Besides being my favorite piece of clothing (which every real male of any age will hang on to for dear life, because, for God’s sake!, he has something to wear that he likes and who knows if he’ll ever find or need anything else for the next 38 years or so?), it had real deep spiritual roots in my life, roots I didn’t fully appreciate until I started to write this little ditty.

Two years ago, the sweatshirt’s big, metal, he-man-sized zipper broke. After diagnosis at several tailors’, the news was grim—no can fix. This didn’t prevent me from wearing the thing anyway, though it slowly, slowly dawned on me that things just weren’t the same. Sometimes it takes a long time for reality to seep into a thick head, but there it was. For the last year, that red hoodie has just hung on its hook—I couldn’t wear it and I couldn’t get rid of it.

So . . . maybe I’m not talking about a piddling piece of cloth but, rather, about my adoring and adored wife, mysteriously taken from me by cancer over a year ago. Maybe I can’t understand how something so good, so right, can no longer be here. Maybe giving up something you love isn’t too hard. Maybe losing the love of your life is. Way too hard.

I finally looked at that red sweatshirt and put it in the pile to go to Goodwill. I was relieved, no longer sucked into its eddying grasp of wishing for what wasn’t to be.

Not long after, I wandered into a small clothing store in New York while waiting for a class to begin nearby. I had a small credit at the store and had unsuccessfully tried several times to use it, so I thought I’d waste some time just browsing around.

Yes, I did find something. Yes, it was a succulent blue, hooded sweatshirt on sale; yes, it actually fit fine and; yes, it felt good.

And, yes, it is emblazoned with that ultimate expression of coincidence, faith, hope, and love—BROOKLYN.