By the end of next week, the festive Thanksgiving fingertip towels that my mother gave me will be in my hamper on top of my swimsuit cover-up.
They will stay there for months and months.
It is possible that I may take them out of the hamper and wash them, and if I do, they will wind up folded on top of the dryer for a few weeks.
Then I’ll get tired of looking at them every time I search for a matching pair of socks, and I’ll stuff them in the powder room drawer, behind the spare rolls of toilet paper and on top of the paperwork that came with the cabinetry six years ago.
In January or so, I will be out of clean powder room towels, so I will use the turkey one, or maybe the leaves towel, without apology, largely because the snowman towels from last year (or was it the year before?) will have gone missing anyhow, and we will need to dry our hands after we wash them.
My mother, on the other hand, would never put out a turkey fingertip towel in January or any time other than the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Her extensive collection of holiday/seasonal towels are likely well organized in their own exclusive drawer that’s devoid of random tchotchkes from other holidays and barely used candlesticks that were a wedding gift from a former co-worker. Like mine.
Next week, she will wash her Thanksgiving fingertip towels, fold them, and place them in their assigned space, in some magical drawer somewhere in the house reserved solely for such a thing. She will leave them there until next November 1st, when she pulls down her Halloween fingertip towels and replaces them until it’s time for the Christmas towels to come out.
Meanwhile, my Thanksgiving fingertip towels will go missing, probably next summer when somebody here needs something to wipe down a skateboard or their sandy feet. I may get lucky and find two of the towels, still somewhat fresh looking, next October. But then I’ll misplace them after Halloween anyhow.
No worries: My mom will buy me a new set. And then we can start the fingertip towel follies all over again until someday, we pack to move out, and find years of fingertip towels behind the dryer. We will decide to use them to keep the Spode Christmas glasses we’ve used twice from breaking along the way.
