Good morning! Are there garments in your wardrobes from which a particular event or association is difficult to shake? I have friends, for example, who after wearing a certain dress at a funeral, have found that putting it on again becomes difficult. I’m a particularly garment-attached person, and there’s perhaps no garment to which I’m more attached – or which carries more significance for me – than the coat I’m wearing in the images I showed you yesterday.
This beautiful coat was made by British company Cabbages and Roses, and I coveted it, saved up for it, and bought it around a dozen years ago. It’s also the coat I was wearing when I had my stroke. The photos below show me wearing this coat just a couple of weeks prior to my stroke in 2010 – in fact, I’m walking on the exact same path, in almost the very spot where the stroke happened (just round the corner, beyond the bend).
In this next photo, I’m wearing the coat 8 months after my stroke and recall that this walk, around Tantallon castle, was one of the first I was able to take without a crutch. Underneath the coat, I’m wearing my brilliant carbon-fibre leg brace (which assisted my dorsiflexion) and Bruce is, in this photograph, around 5 months old. I recall that standing for this photograph was uncomfortable. My body is not at ease.
For me, like many people, the things I’ve worn on difficult or painful or strange occasions become profoundly bound up with those events, and every time I take this coat out of the wardrobe I face the inescapable fact that it was what I was wearing when I had a stroke. So my stroke is very present, and always with me when I wear this coat . . . but in a way, that is also the inescapable truth of my life – my stroke is always present to me. And that’s ok.
In fact, I’d say I love my coat all the more for being with me on that awful day, for carrying me across the before and after of brain injury and disability, and for still being with me now.
So this is my poem about my coat.
A coat for falling
I’ll sing a coat
with words, I’ll weave it back to
meaning.
*
For many, I know, a winter coat is not
the stuff of yearning
yet, I first breathed “be mine”
to braid claith and tailored line
long before I saw
the body.
*
Not this fine fulled wool of dusky blue
not this chalk-soft check
nor these pleats and pockets, ticking-striped:
material but attests
the fabric of intention.
*
A coat with its worn
heart on its sleeve a coat
unashamed of its own nostalgia.
A coat approaching costume
preposterous, fantastic!
A coat around whose silhouette the world resolves itself.
A sheltering husk of braggadocio
to clothe the body’s diffidence.
*
Into its soft folds are gathered
animals, machines, craftwomanship,
work and time and honey-coloured stone
the Yorkshire mill in which its threads were woven
the heart that claimed it and the hands that stitched.
In buttoning, might I bear forth the substance of these things?
*
A coat against which surely all winds shall blow kindly:
godspeed, blue coat!
As assured and fit for purpose as a schooner
my rig and I
sail up Dundas street.
*
Making landfall,
my torn coat is my blanket.
*
When you found me, I was wearing my new half-paralysed body and a hospital gown.
The first thing I said was “where’s my blue coat?”
we laughed about this later.
*
I’ll sing a coat
I’ll restore its meaning
as, needle and egg in hand, I repair its tears.
love, love, love!
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I loved reading this well done. yes, I find it so hard to part with my clothes and I have far too many coats! In another world I’d be a minimalist… but not anytime soon!
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I know this oh so well!
Feeling attached to a garment because I’ve worn it to a special occasion or I’ve baught it somewhere special.
And often this keeps me from being able to part from it, even though I am not wearing it anymore.
I am very sentimental about a shirt I had with me in hospital when giving birth to my daughter.
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Your coat reminds me a clothes shop called Droopy and Brown when I was at York University in the 1970s. Like your coat the clothes required serious saving up but window shopping and dreaming was fun. You can still find some of the dresses on EBay.
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Eleanor! You are absolutely spot on. I too studied and later worked at the University of York (in the 1990s and early 2000s) – and also hugely coveted everything in the window at Droopy & Brown until it closed. I now spend many hours watching the ebay auctions for those dresses, but have never yetyet managed to score one.
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Ohh awesome .thank you
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I remember well the photo of you in your coat with the lovely red leather backpack. Hard to believe that was so long ago and so much has happened since.
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oh, thank you, Kate. So much here!
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Thank you
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Thank you for your lovely poem, Kate. It reminded me of Pablo Neruda’s ode to his hand-knitted socks!
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honoured, Jean!
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I have very few “madeleine moments” that involve clothes, which is a little odd because I can be quite sentimental about *things*. I suppose “garment-attached” is a good way to describe what I am not: I don’t put that much thought into my clothing, and I tend to wear things to rags, so they rarely have a particular special memory attached. (I do have a blue winter coat that I am rather smug about, mostly because I got it at a great price and, unlike many of my clothing purchases, it is just perfect for my needs). I have very visceral memories, though, for clothing items that I make, even small ones like hats. I’m a slow crafter, so I spend a lot of time with each piece and there are few things that I make and keep for myself, so remembering the making of them doesn’t exactly tax my memory! Several of them are your designs, Kate: I remember where I got the yarn, where I was sitting when I cast on, the first time I wore the FO, etc. Now I am painstakingly pinning together a face mask from a pattern in the Times, using cotton offcuts from a set of curtains. Memorable, for sure!
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THE perfect coat!!!! Reminds me of being cocooned in a perfect blanket.
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Dearest Kate, thank you so much again for your wonderful way with words and thoughts. Your talents are so comforting.
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Beautiful! Thank you.
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Kate, I started following again during the pandemic. I love how some days it’s patterns and practice, others it’s poetry and story, and another might be manufacturing and community. I live how you encompass all matters of life with such wisdom and beauty and also without leaving go of material life, work, production! Thank you for being like a ballast and a boat at this time.
Brain injured person here finding encouragement and comfort in your work,
Lori
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I’ve just said out loud a really rude expletive and wanted to write it down, but really didn’t want to offend. So I shall think again …. that was absolutely brilliant. The poem, the pictures, the words. God, that was the best piece of writing I’ve seen in a long while.. I love the way you describe something that must have been so life changing in such simple words. It gives far more impact and explains so much clearer. I remember reading a book by Primo Levi about Auschwitz and it was so matter of fact that it hit me like a sledgehammer … it’s simplicity strangely made far better reading. Same here with you. I also absolutely love the coat. I’ve never bought anything from Cabbages and Roses but have wanted to … they’re expensive but worth every penny. I remember seeing a pale blue coat of theirs years ago, it was like a summer coat that was worn in, I think, Pride and Prejudice and was of a similar styling to yours. I still regret not having bought it!! I do hope that you’re ok … clearly I need to do some reading and catch up on a lot of posts from you.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for such a great post and I shall now do a google and see if Cabbages and Roses are not only still around but have anywhere out here in New York!! Katie
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Thank you Kate. Yes I have a beautiful skirt that I just can’t wear again because of a complex series of experiences associated with it, something sad for a friend.I look forward to your posts each day!KatherineSent from my U.S.Cellular® Smartphone
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My boyfriend still mourns a perfect pair of French Connection jeans that were cut off him in a hospital some years ago, after he fell and seriously hurt his knee (if anyone asks him about the scar, he tells them ‘shark attack’). He vividly remembers pleading with nurses to let him take them off himself instead so he could get the rip mended later. He did go back and buy another pair, but as so often happens the cut was different and they just *weren’t the same*, and he has never, ever found a pair of jeans as good since. I suspect he might well spend the rest of his life looking. I am very lucky to have found someone who loves clothes, colour and pattern as much, if not more, as me.
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Kate I am loving your blog. xx
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So beautiful! The fabrics that we have woven into the fabrics of our lives. The coat with its mending, you with your mending, all our perfect imperfections. Thank you.
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This is wonderful, Kate. A really beautiful marriage of your skill with words and your love for all things textile
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Oh your poetry is beautiful and inspiring. I so relate to this one. I was wearing a favourite dress when I had a very unexpected heart attack (SCAD) – 2 years ago. I can remember, in the agony, wishing I’d worn different clothes that day and hoping the paramedics wouldn’t have to cut my dress to tend to me. Thankfully they didn’t and each time I put it on now, I pause and am thankful I’m still here to wear it. Heartfelt wishes to you.
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hurrah for the resilience of both you, and your favourite dress!
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In 1996 I made myself a beautiful dress in black velvet, with a waterfall neck. I made it for a friends wedding, but I never went there because I was ill. But it is still my favourite little black dress. It was a lot of work back then, I hat to seam everything by hand.
It still is beautiful, thanks to the exceptional fabric. It looks lovely with leggings and dr,martens boots and with heels. love it!
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Thank you Kate – beautiful words and I fully concur with the idea of certain clothes being invested and threaded through with meaning. For this reason, I love to find old train tickets and forgotten lipsticks in the pockets of remembered coats and I like to leave them there to find again. I’ve always coveted that coat of yours when I’ve seen you wearing it; great at the moment with the cheering toast scarf.
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Dear Kate, thank you for sharing your sensitive and inspiring poems here. Many of us are garment attached, for the shelter you speak of in your poem, or in hope of a new self, or maybe to honour a past one. I have an old coat of my Mum’s I love to keep hanging with my own, and when I miss my absent sons I pull on one of their shirts or sweaters. Thank you for writing so movingly about your brave coat!
I’ve just joined the great volunteer army of needlewomen and men making up scrubs and wash bags for the NHS, which are so desperately needed. I’ll try and stitch some protecting magic into each! Yours is the perfect poem to start the day. Thank you.
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My eyes have randomly started leaking. Just beautiful. I definitely get the attachment. I have a little pair of sealskin Norwegian boots bought for me as a 2 year old and never wore them because they were lethally slippery. However they hang in my work room and I love them!
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Drat – I didn’t mean to get tears in my eyes, but your poem did it. : Some clothes ar so important as though they are actually part of us. Something my dear OH fails to understand. I can see why your concern for that particular coat, in the aftermath.
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That is wonderf ul, Kate, so evocative and emotive. I’m not a great fan of poetry usually but love this. Thank you for letting us see it. Take care.
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Lovely, Kate! And the coat is stunning
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I have an ancient fox fur stole in my cupboard. It’s not something I would ever wear but it belonged to my maternal grandmother who died when I was 3 over 60 years ago .
The only picture I have of us both is a formal one at my christening she is al dressed up and wearing the stole.
I have one actual memory of her at breakfast with a box of Energen starched reduced rolls by her which allowed me to work out who this woman who must have really meant something to me. I think this must have been the Christmas before the stroke that left her bed bound and shortly afterwards her demiss
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What a brilliant poem. I have a beautiful Burberry raincoat. When my mother in law became ill, my FIL bought it for her to wear for her frequent hospital trips. All my in laws are really tall – but she was petite, so I was the one who inherited it. 34years later I still cherish it, and the memory of a wonderful lady. It is a British classic, and looks as good today as it did then
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Thank you so much for your daily blogs, your poems can often bring tears, the snipe is with me still. In this strange time your generosity of spirit is inspiring. I understand how garments can have stories woven into them and wearing them brings so many images and emotions back. Today I said goodbye to a favourite which had stains that were determined to remain. I have taken a pattern from it so perhaps a new creation will start to tell it’s own tales in the future.
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Can you not stitch over the stains or appliqué something on top? Make feature of the mends?
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Kate, you write the most amazing and insightful poetry. I am loving each poem you pur here (and I hope there ight be a book in due course?)
JennyS
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I’ve always felt my nostalgia for certain clothes was trivial, albeit to me special. I shall wear that velvet jacket with new pride. Thank you.
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Hi, Kate, Do you know anything about Hercule Poirot’s Shetland Hap? I would like a pattern. There’s a mystery for you! Ruth
Sent from my iPad
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I shall be baking white rolls and reading books today.. it’s been a busy week adjusting to working from home and I am looking forward to some down time 👍
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