They aren't even mine. I inherited them. They came with my husband not on the day we were married but not long after, a set of encyclopedias, which had lived in his bedroom when he was growing up. "Take them," his mother must have said.

You never know is the reason I have a closet full of shoes and boots and coats and hats I don't wear.

For years, my husband has been suggesting that for every thing new I bring into the house, an old thing should go out. When he began telling me this a million years ago, I a) ignored him and b) was a young woman who didn't foresee that one day I might be one of the "old things." You see, my husband lives by this rule. If he buys new shoes, he throws out the scuffed-beyond-redemption ones. If he loses a glove...