The Towel

Everyone has a towel, or should.

I was telling someone today that after the death of someone that you are close to that the initial shock is pretty hard, but the hard parts are confronting memories. Today, as I was going through my father's belongings, I came across something that might seem pretty simple to a few people. I came across my father's favorite towel.

Mind you, my father never said it was his favorite towel. He never claimed that he had a favorite towel. A man who marked his sock pairs with magic marker to assure even wear on his socks, it's apparent that he was fastidious about many things. Like any guy I know, he wore clothes until they fell off - but when it came to going out, he was a bit more flashy in his last 10 years - perhaps flashier than the rest of his life. He paid a lot of attention to his appearance after his quadruple bypass in 1995. His clothing dry cleaned. His khaki trousers and yellow t-shirts were his uniform, and the Red Cross is going to have matching people running around shortly; the Army of Rocky. That's somewhat amusing in a way.

The point here is that appearance to him meant a lot. More than me, though I'm hardly a yardstick (jeans and a good shirt is my comfort zone). But he really looked good these last years when he wanted to - and he usually wanted to. His beard was impeccable, his hair well groomed, and he got manicures and pedicures regularly.

So now you have a better idea of who we are talking about when I start writing more about this towel.¹ It's probably a non-descript towel to most. The color is off-orange, more towards the brown side though light in color. He's had this towel since at least the 1980s. It may even have come from Ohio back in 1980. But it is a well maintained towel. There are no holes in it, oddly enough, though the edges are frayed. It's been all over Trinidad and Tobago, and who knows where else it has been.

It's always these little things that remind you of stuff. The trip to the beach, with the beaten towel. The second towel was always a good towel, but it was never this towel. Nobody else used this towel. And it just doesn't seem proper to let anyone else use the towel. So it didn't get packed. I just held it, and just, well... just remembered every time I saw the towel that I could.

The funny part? My father never read Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, or anything else by Douglas Adams. Yet, he had a Hitchhiker's towel. He just skipped the planet without his towel this time.

It only seems fitting that it should continue being a Hitchhiker's towel.

¹I avoided taking a picture of it because it wouldn't ever do the towel justice.