Ever since getting on YLF, I have been trying to ditch the habit of saving my best 'stuff' for the special day that never seems to come.

Yet I have rationalised the habit many times---it came from times that were hard, or because I bought for a fantasy, mess-free, no-dirt lifestyle, or because I'm just a hoarder by nature, or merely have low self-esteem...

This post triggered a memory that just informed me it was learnt behaviour.

Learnt very literally at my mother's knee. The day she sent me off to some 'special day' or other at school wearing her wedding saree. And I came home, maybe about 10 or 12 years old, with a rip in the beautiful purple silver-brocaded (real deal!) silk that had been sitting in mothballs and tissue for over a dozen years. And my mother's face crumpled. She never stopped talking about her precious saree that 'I wore and ripped'--still hasn't. She never forgot, though she said she forgave. I never stopped feeling the guilt or resentment about the guilt. Even though she was the one who insisted I wear it, since it was 'just lying around, and for what?'... When my father offered to salvage the beautiful yardage by making a dress or kameez out of it, I refused. The colour of sour grapes wouldn't wash...

And that reminded me of my grandmother, too, who defended me that day with 'she's just a child and it is just stuff'. My grandmother was widowed at 23 and never ever adorned again. Not even a hair tie for her or shoes except on the rare pilgrimage (canvas pumps even then, even in the Himalayas, for gods' sake---literally!) The plain lengths of bleached white cotton cloth that were her saree till the day she died, and the one ecru shawl she would allow her children to get her every few winters were all I ever knew her in. She was beautiful. Even so, she was beautiful. And striking. But it was never possible to forget that the point of her dress was to make sure she would be not-beautiful, not-striking.

I learnt at my mother's knee and my grandmother's that special clothes are for special days and special people. Not everyone. Not everyday. I learnt that even the best people were not necessarily worthy of the best stuff.

I wish I hadn't.

I need to keep unlearning this old 'lesson'. Thanks for the reminder and the insight, La Belle Demimondaine.

Anyone else want to have a go at tracing their bad (closet) habits in order to purge them? (Or heck, even un-closeted habits if you want...)