3 Red Scarves

Not ever wanting to be caught without absolutely everything I need, I tend to create large bags of stuff and cart them around with me wherever I go.  To work, to my boyfriend's house, running errands--I'm loaded down with bags.  Not to mention my purse.  In  my medium-sized purse alone in addition to a wallet and check book I probably have 3 containers of dental floss (which you would think means that I floss more than once or twice a week but really just means I've never taken them out after the dental hygienist pushed them on me), 2 and a half pairs of earrings, 2 month's worth of mail, a guitar tuner and 1 container of Chapstick that I can never find when my lips hurt.  When these large bags take over my dining room, the trunk of my car or make it impossible for me to navigate around my desk at work, then it is time to go through them and put everything away.  Invariably I find lunch boxes with food that I forgot to eat during that month, magazines that I meant to recycle, and gym clothes that I've been looking for.  Yesterday, in order to free up some of these bags for their original purpose (grocery shopping) I cleaned out the collection of bags in the corner of the dining room.  And yes, I found half of a smelly yogurt parfait, about 10 magazines, a cute black shirt a friend gave me because it was too big for her and 3 red scarves.

I laughed and said to my youngest son, "That's weird.  Look--I have 3 red scarves.  Who needs 3 red scarves?"  So he responded with a reasonable question, "Did you buy them all yourself?"  I told him that I did not, that they were all gifts.  And for a second that is what I really thought, but looking at the 3 red scarves hanging on the coat rack, memories of their origins came flooding back.  The one I bought from a friend that was making them out of felt for a fundraiser, the soft thickly knitted one was from when I returned a gift that did not fit, and the fancier one was a gift--but I just as easily could have bought it myself.  There is something about a red scarf in winter that is irresistible to me.  Visual as well as physical warmth to help get through the long winter in Maine.