Staying Power Chapter Two: Drawstrings Again

Very near the end of my time as an employed person I had a job that required me to go most days to downtown Seattle to a large multi-story office building. I resisted going there as much as possible, preferring to work in my home office. My boss was in Denver so I was as close to him if I needed anything from him in my home office as I was in downtown Seattle: I had broadband internet and several phone lines and a full complement of computer equipment, including the one provided by my employer. But it was not considered good form to indulge in extended periods of absence from the office, even though when there, I was substantially less productive than I was in my home office. There wasn’t a water cooler around which everyone gathered, but “everyone” was, nonetheless, quite creative in indulging in work-like activities that could waste vast quantities of time. I spent as little time at that office tower as possible, but I spent substantial time there nevertheless.

One of the benefits that flowed from being downtown, having nothing to do with the needs of the business for which I worked, was the variety and quality of places that could be chosen for lunch. One of those places I had discovered, and it seemed odd that it was in a department store, but it was, was the restaurant at Nordstrom. I ate there often.

One day when I was eating at Nordstrom I thought of my long rag-bagged flannel pajamas.

“I wonder” I thought to myself, “if they still sell those things?” After lunch I went to the men’s department and asked. They did in fact still sell those things. But it was February when I had asked the question and they were all sold out for that pajama sales cycle. They got the pajamas in September or October and sold them until the last pair had been purchased. And that last pair was usually purchased long before Christmas. I learned from this post lunch query that I wasn’t the only person in Seattle who prized those pajamas. They were exceptionally popular.
So I made a mental note to check in when September had arrived.
And I did. And the pajamas were in. And I bought five pair. And all was once again right with the world. Or at least all was right with that part of the world that I was part of during my sleeping hours.

As with my previously possessed single pair, time wended its way forward: the shortest day merged with the longest; the chestnuts waxed, waned and disappeared; the mountain ashes scented the early spring air and then disappeared until that magic autumn day when they leapt forth from their anonymous green raiment with massive flashes of orange. And those chestnuts, and those Mountain Ashes joined all the rest of those things that I had gradually begun to notice were marking the passage of time , and marking the swiftly accelerating passage, of my life. One day the drawstrings of the pair of pajamas that I was wearing on that day began to disintegrate. Then so did the next and the next and the next as their hosts were put into service. And then all five were bound up in the death spiral of breaks and knots and lumpy congested attempts at still utilizing them for their intended function; and all were rapidly descending into unusability.

But this time the disintegration was confined solely to the drawstrings. The reason that I had bought five pair of pajamas had been to give four of them an extended break from wear and tear in each wearing cycle. That concept had proved to be a valid one with the pajamas themselves. They showed absolutely no sign of wear. But as the drawstrings began their descent into disintegration I was, I began to believe, apparently going to be confronted with the need to dispose of five perfectly good pairs of pajamas once the imminent lapsing of their drawstrings into un-usability had been completed.

But then I had an idea. I took a pair of the failing drawstring bottoms with me to my cleaners. I also took some suits and shirts and sweaters to cover the real purpose of the visit.

After the always pleasant acknowledgement of how much I enjoyed the Chinese pop music that was always being played, and after the interesting if incomprehensible discussion of why the statue of Ho Ti was facing the opposite direction from the last time I had been there I pulled the pajama pants from the pile of cleaning and laundry and showed the lady the problem and posed the question, could she make new drawstring. She had done some minor zipper work for me previously and had performed major and successful surgery on a rip that had occurred in my Facanable jacket resulting from my stumbling into a sharp door handle on rue de Grenelle, so I had a lot of faith in her abilities. The Facanable repair had involved some pretty tricky opening and re-sewing of the lining of the jacket’s sleeve, so I was pretty sure she could figure out how to get into the enclosed trace that housed the drawstrings and detach them from their moorings, build their replacements and repeat the whole process in reverse. If only she would.

She looked at me. I looked at her. Neither of us said anything. She took the pajamas away to a place out of my sight. Time passed. And then she re- appeared. “Fifteen dollars” she said. “Do it” I said.

A week later I picked up my cleaning and before leaving, I inspected what she had done. I had brought the other four pajama bottoms with me in the event that it looked as if the lady had been able to solve the problem.

Inspection revealed that she had solved the problem. The pajamas possessed perfectly installed, perfectly functioning new drawstrings. Where their predecessors had been slender quarter inch strands of flannel rolled and sewn closed I now had inch wide pieces of double layered and double sewn cotton material whose probable primary function prior to being redeployed as draw strings had been to be used as backing for material needing reinforcement and stiffening. But they fit in their traces and they were fastened firmly to the interior of those traces and they worked. The pajamas could be cinched up smoothly and the strings could be tied and there was no resistance or sluggishness in their opening or closing; they worked. They were a marvel of over-engineering, but they worked.

So I flung the other four pair on the counter and said “these too.”

Now I have a new and philosophically interesting situation: those drawstrings are, I believe, as close to indestructible as it is possible for humanity to produce from cloth. They will far outlive the garments for whom they serve. The pajamas are still showing the wisdom of my decision to have five pair, thus allowing mostly off duty time. They are still not showing any evidence of disintegration. But the Chestnuts are flashing by with increasing temporal velocity and it is inevitable that the soft, warm flannel will at some point shout “uncle” and begin to descend into the rents and frays and fuzzes of their single predecessor. But those drawstrings seem to be destined for immortality. They will surely outlive me. They will almost as surely outlive this century, even allowing for its current extreme youth. They may even nearly outlive the planet. I can easily imagine them among the final physical things that finally burst into flame as the earth is incinerated, or leap into nothingness as the earth slips with dramatic silence like some spherical version of the Titanic into its predestined rendezvous with its previously assigned black hole, or are called to final judgment in the event that such an unlikely thing actually occurs.