Each morning I dress in clean clothes remembering when long years ago I would slip into the same garments I put on the day before. The law now is not to wear anything I had on my body before. If I removed it because I wanted a different color or a better style or wore it all day into the dirty clothes pile it goes.

Now for the lecture - when I was your age .... Don't listen. Just let me tell you there were very good reasons why as a child of seven years I pulled on the same long johns still inside the same long cotton stockings that lay in a neat pile beside my bed. First of all I only had one other pair of long underwear and considering our circumstance was lucky to have that. However they were not red as much as I would have liked the color. Second there was no opportunity to wash each day. Heating the water in a copper boiler (they were special containers for that) on the top of a kitchen range (a strange name for a wood stove of iron with a fire pot, an oven for baking, a warming oven above, and a water reservoir) was an hour long task usually begun after noon meal, which we called dinner. Except on wash day the boiler was put on the night before and the fire stoked long before daybreak. Often the white clothes were boiled in the water to loosen the dirt before Mother would soap them and rub them mercilessly across a washboard that leaned against the inside of the big galvanized washtub.

In Minnesota from October until May when Mother put the clothes in the dryer - that is - hung them on the clothesline - garments froze into grotesque shapes that sometimes softened in the bleak winter sun. The best times were when clothes would be blown soft by an incessant wind and smell sweetly of fresh air. Often the frozen garments were brought in to dry on a rack that took second place to children's bodies beside the Round Oak heater in the family room. But that is a joke and an entirely different story. My clean underwear was ironed by my movements after I donned it on Sunday morning clean from the Saturday night bath. It was a good feeling - pulling on the long underwear, the first time or the seventh time. It warmed quickly on my body and added to my feeling of security. I don't have that feeling now when I put on any garment, let alone my underwear.

Naomi Sherer