The gloves are on the move...or not. No longer warming hands, stuffed into pockets, or coat sleeves, the ones I see wave from the slush or snow, subway steps or bus stops.
It began a week or so ago with a nice new pair of men's leather gloves wrapped in a rabbit fur outdoorsman's hat that were left in an empty seat at the Garden. How convenient to try out the hat in the next day's blizzard, how itchy the rabbit fur and decidedly uncool the look! Hat and gloves now rest in the Garden lost and found. Undoubtedly a holiday gift, how will the owner explain the loss? Was it for dad, uncle, grandpa, or perhaps a college student like the ones sipping their rum and cokes in last nights game, getting ever carried away with the Celts' dominance of the Jazz?
On Tuesday I got off the bus and directly saw another pair of once lovely lined leather gloves sodden with slush and surely never to be salvaged. Left them on the electric box in front of the Liberty Hotel. I imagined the owner digging in her pocket for a Charlie card and hoped she didn't have a long walk at the end of the line.
Climbing the steps from Park Street's Red Line to the Green there in a corner a black velvet glove lay with fingers outstretched, elegant, almost frivolous for the icey weather. I saw rhinestone bracelets and high heels and a cold hand jabbed inside a black NorthFace coat, spikey heeled boots and a date to be met.
Like broken flipflops on the summer beaches, these gloves mark how the season grabs us, sometimes taking just a small piece of what but not who we are.
