Gary's hankies

hand·ker·chief

[hang-ker-chif, -cheef]

noun 1.a small piece of linen, silk, or other fabric, usually square, and used especially for wiping one's nose, eyes, face, etc., or for decorative purposes.

 Who uses hankies anymore?  My mom does, of course.  But then, she doesn't leave the house without a hat on her head either...
Hankies are kind of old fashioned.  My grandpa used them, my dad used them, but the custom went by the wayside in the 60's I think.

Well, Gary did use hankies.  He always had one available to snort loudly into.  He carried a fresh one every day to work on his jobs in construction, the cabinetry business and in management.
In all these positions, he was a hands on kind of guy anyway, so he exposed his nose to stuff that irritated it and made it run.

Of course construction meant working outside in every kind of weather.  Your nose runs a lot.  You need to blow it.  What better than a hankie to whip out of your back pocket? Dust and dirt in the nose and face? Again, the hankie is what you want instead of wasting time hunting down a rough tiny paper kleenex.

Those hankies really came in handy when the boys were little.  More often dirty little faces left their mark on Gary's hankies than did his. Spit into a hankie, mop the mess up and your kid looks pretty presentable again. 

I used to carefully fold the hankies out of the dryer for him in the way he requested I do it.  Later, he did his own folding along with his underwear.  Soon he was just stuffing them unfolded into his pocket.  "They just get all wrinkled anyway" he'd say.  

Gary used hankies instead of kleenex by his bedside.  The last time I remember him asking me to get him  a clean one, I did. I handed it to him but I stayed thinking he would blow his nose and hand it back to me.  He asked me to leave because, he said as he turned his head and held the hankie close, "I want to be alone. I just have to cry".  I left.

I have most of Gary's hankies still.  Some of them became so thin you could see through them.  I tossed them.
The nicer, mostly cotton hankies I kept and I use them. There is nothing nicer than a soft white hankie to blow your nose into and soak up tears.   I have a hankie in just about every room now.  They are rumpled and in various states of dryness depending on how I feel and how often they are called into action.

I think about Gary when I use his hankies.  I smell them and I remember always being able to ask him, "Can I borrow your hankie?" and always having him dig one out of his pocket and hand it over to me.  I'm glad that Gary had this 'old fashioned' custom. I'm using one right now.