Celebrating Second Hand
“Can you stay after school?” she asked. As a second grader, home wasn’t an especially happy place to hurry to. Dad’s drinking had worsened over the years and Mom had bigger worries than after school milk and cookies. “We’ll wait until the others are gone,” Sister Leodegard said. I was the teacher’s pet, so I suspected that I might be the recipient of some special privilege that she didn’t want my classmates to see. The hallways eventually emptied and she opened the wooden closet door. She pulled out a woman’s red wool coat. In the 1960s we would have called
