Thomas Erickson
April 2023

I am cleaning out the closet in the mudroom. Things accumulate here: it is an ideal place to tuck things as we depart in a rush, or return in a wave of fatigue. Once tucked, however, they are apt to be forgotten in the dark, still space of the closet. Gradually, the well-ordered space is engulfed by an alluvial fan of detritus washed up by the wakes of our passage. Tucks become tosses, the angle of repose is approached, and soon thereafter I am forced into action.

I am sorting through the cloth bags. There are more than expected. To maintain a semblance of order, one has been stuffed inside another, and another inside that, and so on. As in a late-night horror movie, seemingly mundane objects have come together and multiplied into bloated rag-doll matryoshkas. I pull them one out of another out of another out of another; they unfurl like clowns from a clown-car. Each has striking colors, eye-catching logos, and acronyms that have mysterious, if mundane, referents. Some are ancient, from long-passed professional conferences: CHI93, HICSS97, CSCW88. Others are mementos of a sort, reminders of events, or trips, or places, like the Big Save bag from the eponymous store in Hanalei. Yet others are more purely functional, with internal meshes to secure bottles or zippered tops that conceal secret inner pockets.

Sorting must be undertaken with care. As I’ve learned, a bag that appears of no import to me may mean something special to my spouse: ‘You discarded that?’ The tone is an alloy of astonishment and despair. Hence, I hesitate when I encounter the unassuming “Cultural Cloth” bag from Wisconsin. It is too small to be of any real use. But I don’t recognize it; I can connect it to no known event or place. I prudently set it aside and move on to other things.

Later, upon showing it to my spouse, I find that it is unknown to her as well. But, she suggests, someone had probably given it to us to take something home. Perhaps extras from a meal, or as a wrapper for a small gift like a jar of jam. (One cannot give naked gifts! They must be decently covered.). ‘We should return it!’

I know which ‘we’ she means.

With little thought I decide it must be from K and C, and I drop it off at their house, along with a book I am passing on to them. They appreciate the book, but disclaim any knowledge of the bag. And more. Inspecting it more thoroughly than I did, they found a slightly crumpled cloth napkin inside of it. ‘Very pretty,’ they said, ‘but not ours.’ ‘Linen,’ they diagnosed, which, as C loves linen clothes, is a conclusion I did not question.

The bag, with napkin, returned to our house. I set out to determine its owner, a seemingly simple task. The list of friends who would both give us something in a decorative if somewhat small cloth bag, and who also use linen napkins, is short. I contact each to enquire. Sequentially. I wish to avoid the scenario where two sets of friends would simultaneously claim the pretty linen napkin. Not that we have acquisitive friends, but why seek out trouble?

Opinions on the napkin are uniformly positive, but neither of the couples I query claim it. Clearly my fears of acquisitive friends were unjustified. I am about to contact the third couple, when my spouse enquirs as to the progress of napkin repatriation. I describe my efforts. ‘Of course it’s not those two. It’s S and K. If you’d asked me, I would have said to contact them first!’ Naturally, she was right.

This leaves open the question of how the napkin made its way into the bag.

Our circle of friends has a custom of having small dinner parties. The parties vary in their formality, but it is not uncommon that there is a nice table, nice glassware, and at times a veritable arsenal of forks and knives and spoons. And, of course, napkins. Cloth napkins.

With some embarrassment I must admit that, outside of dinner parties, I am not much of a napkin user. Of course – if the dish calls for it – a leaky burrito, or a dish of bolognaise, or some other not entirely well-structured culinary concoction – I may deploy a paper towel. But if I’m using a cloth napkin, it means it’s a dinner party.

And, really now, can’t we at least admit it’s a bit odd? That, at a formal party, one is a handed neatly-folded, finely-woven square of cloth, usually of a light color to demonstrate its immaculate cleanliness, for the express purpose of staining it with a mixture of one’s saliva and just-masticated food? The prospect is a bit off-putting. It would make more sense to me if there were a larger purpose to it. Perhaps, as dinner ended, the napkins could be collected, hastily ironed, and collated into a montage, an homage to the relish the meal had evoked in its partakers. Or among the younger set, phones would emerge to capture napkin-selfies to memorialize the meal; surely evidence of consumption would be a more suitable memento than a picture of a pristine but untouched dish? The more diligent would not stop there, but would annotate their stains – “…and blueberry pie for dessert!” – and tag the napkin-selfies of their fellow diners. And no doubt, in the background, soulless but inquisitive AIs would analyze the images, and spin the stained flax of the napkin-selfies into the gold of market trend-prediction – “Blueberries rise in popularity!” But I digress.

It is not generally recognized that napkin use is not a simple matter. Well, it starts off simply enough: you sit down, pick up the napkin, unfold it, and put it in your lap. If that were all there were to it, I would be a perfectly competent napkin user. Where I fall from grace is when I rise from the table. An accomplished napkinist would, remembering their napkin, pluck it from their lap, give it a fold or two, and drape it at gracefully at their place while they went on whatever errand caused them to rise. I, however, will have forgotten that I have an unaccustomed piece of cloth in my lap. So I rise, and the napkin falls to the floor, its floppy descent catching my notice. I discretely pick it up, but rather than refolding the napkin in front of an audience, I nonchalantly tuck it into my pants pocket, and go off on my errand. By the time I’ve returned to the table, I’ve again forgotten the napkin, and it may well spend the rest of the evening dangling from my pocket, rather than protecting my lap. Fortunately, this infelicity, sunk beneath the table’s horizon, is hidden from my fellow diners. As dinner ends, and I rise again, I typically notice the napkin and release it from its strictures, leaving it at my place.

However, on one evening, I surmise that I must not have noticed it until we were leaving the house and our hosts – being either unobservant or too circumspect to comment – did not manage to retrieve their napkin. At some point during our departure I must have noticed it and tucked it into the cute, if rather compact, cloth bag they’d given us.

The twists and turns of my imagining loosen my knotted memory. Pieces spill forth: S and K’s apartment. A deeply cold winter’s night. Candles and camaraderie. A celebration of some sort. The remains of a meal sit before us. Generously refilled wine glasses have stamped mackled red rings on the tablecloth. I hold up the napkin and examine its stains. Like a lunatic viewing a Roarsach test, the blotches take on meaning: Osso bucco. Red wine. A smear of chocolate? Ah, yes, a cheese cake at the end of the meal. There was extra, and it rode home in a container nestled within the little cloth bag, with the napkin as a stowaway.

Pleased by the recollections tapped by the napkin, I decide to keep it. They’ll not miss it.

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