White glove regrets

I am usually a person of very few regrets....self appointed leader of "jews without guilt"....however a post by Bill Case on my Facebook about my wearing a fedora (and its link to a fedora wearing picture of Myer Lansky) reminded me of one of those.

My mother died in 1988, my father in 1992. The big regret here was (as only child) not living close by to support them in their later years. That's one of my big 3 (regrets!) But the little one that keeps nagging at me is one thing I didn't keep when I cleaned out their house in Springfield, NJ. In my parents closet on my mother's side (my father didn't touch a thing of hers in the four years since she died) was a long flat box. When I opened the box I found it contained many pairs of long white gloves. I can still recall the scent of powder in that box.  I can see the gloves in a slightly different shades of white, some plain, some crocheted, lying quiet and still in that box.  When was the last time they saw the light of day?

Now my mom was not a particularly dress up kind of person. Those gloves of hers evoked an earlier time and an earlier her, in a way nothing else ever has....If I  imagine my mother wearing any of these, I am transported (with her) into a past time and sensibility I never knew.  It's like a magic ship to another time... a  time where elegance was desirable, where women were mostly covered.

I wish I had those gloves so I could ride that ship more often. And what might it feel like if I could actually open the box and touch and smell the white gloves????

Postscript:   Where are the gloves now?   Are they still resting in their box?  When I took everything I wanted from their house, I had a church from Newark clean out the house to get ready for sale.   Their payoff was to sell the things left behind in a used goods shop.  Is there an elegant African American woman now wearing my mother's gloves, or have they just become costume dressup for some kid?