Criteria of Excellency
My l4-year-old son, John, and I spotted the coat simultaneously.
It was hanging on a rack at a secondhand clothing store
in Northampton Mass,
crammed in with shoddy trench coats and an assortment of sad,
woolen overcoats—a rose among thorns.
While the other coats drooped,
this one looked as if it were holding itself up.
The thick, black wool of the double-breasted chesterfield
was soft and unworn, as though it had been preserved
in mothballs for years in dead old Uncle Henry's steamer trunk.
The coat had a black velvet collar, beautiful tailoring,
a Fifth Avenue label and an unbelievable price of $28.
We looked at each other, saying nothing,
but John's eyes gleamed. Dark, woolen topcoats were popular
just then with teenage boys,
but could cost several hundred dollars new.
This coat was even better,
bearing that touch of classic elegance from a bygone era.
John slid his arms down into the heavy satin lining of the sleeves
and buttoned the coat. He turned from side to side,
eyeing himself in the mirror with a serious,
studied expression that soon changed into a smile.
The fit was perfect.
John wore the coat to school the next day
and came home wearing a big grin.
“Did the kids like your coat?” I asked.
“They loved it.” he said, carefully folding it
over the back of a chair and smoothing it flat.
I started calling him “Lord Chesterfield” and “The Great Gatsby.”
Over the next few weeks, a change came over John.
Agreement replaced contrariness, quiet,
reasoned discussion replaced argument.
He became more judicious, more mannerly,
more thoughtful, eager to please.
“Good dinner, Mom.” he would say every evening.
He would generously loan his younger brother his tapes
and lecture him on the niceties of behaviour;
without a word of objection,
he would carry in wood for the stove.
One day when I suggested
that he might start on homework before dinner,
John—a veteran procrastinator—said,
“You're right. I guess I will.”
When I mentioned this incident to
one of his teachers and remarked that I didn't know
what caused the changes, she said laughing.
“It must be his coat!” Another teacher told him
she was giving him a good mark not only because
he had earned it but because she liked his coat.
At the library, we ran into a friend
who had not seen our children in a long time,
“Could this be John?” he asked,
looking up to John's new height,
assessing the cut of his coat and extending his hand,
one gentleman to another.
John and I both know we should never mistake a person's clothes
for the real person within them.
But there is something to be said
for wearing a standard of excellence for the world to see,
for practising standards of excellence in thought,
speech, and behaviour, and for matching
what is on the inside to what is on the outside.
Sometimes, watching John leave for school,
I've remembered with a keen sting
what it felt like to be in the eighth grade-a time
when it was as easy to try on different approaches to life
as it was to try on a coat. The whole world,
the whole future is stretched out ahead,
a vast panorama where all the doors are open.
And if I were there right now,
I would picture myself walking through those doors
wearing my wonderful, magical coat.