Coat closet

Like most Midwesterners I know, I have multiple winter coats. A wardrobe of coats, even.

There’s my main winter coat, a down-filled parka with fake fur around the hood the better to keep snow and wind away from my face. And a lighter weight down jacket for days that are chilly, but not quite as cold. That coat packs neatly into its own carrying bag made out of a pocket, and can serve as a pillow on a plane or in a car.

I also have, somewhere in a closet, a heavy navy blue woolen winter coat, the kind of thing you would wear with a suit. It doesn’t get much wear in these casual days. Even further back is a sealskin coat that was handed down from an unmarried great-aunt, possibly given to her by a paramour in the 1930s or 1940s. I’ve never worn it because a) I generally don’t wear fur, even if the animal that it originally belonged to would be long dead anyway; and b) it feels like it weighs about 40 pounds. I am certain that it is very warm.

I’m thinking of all of those coats as we approach the season when every day means a change in temperature and wardrobe. Do I need a heavy coat? The lighter winter coat? When should I move to an even lighter spring coat, maybe with a sweater under it?

And then I remember what John the Baptist told people who were asking how to lead a good life. If you have two coats, and someone else has none, give one away. That’s a paraphrase of Luke 3:11, where I have seen the garment in question be variously translated as a coat, cloak, tunic and shirt. But the point stands: If you have extra, and your neighbor doesn’t have enough, it’s on you to share the wealth.

That information isn’t new to me. I’ve been hearing it since I was a child in religious education classes and then in Catholic schools, where our homerooms competed to see who could donate more to Catholic Relief Services’ Operation Rice Bowl each year. I think the winning class got a lunchtime pizza party.

When it comes to coats, we have given many away. Not generally in formal coat drives, because I never seem to be able to lay my hands on what I’m looking for when I need to. More on an informal basis, such as when my late mother-in-law would see kids walking past the house to the nearby school, wearing hoodies and sneakers in the snow, and press extra coats on them.

Sometimes they were returned the next day, with abashed children wearing their own coats that they had spurned the day before, but often they weren’t.

Late last fall, my husband filled his trunk with coats and other heavy clothing we were no longer using and gave them to anyone he saw who might need it, mostly migrant families who seemed unprepared for the Chicago winter.

I hope they were able to keep warm. Now I just need to find more to give away.