Fabric

by: N.Y. Smith

Category: Sam POV

Samuel Norman Seaborn

I bought this suit for President Bartlet's first inauguration. I had it made, actually, custom-tailored from a mid-weight wool-silk blend. I wore it under cashmere for the swearing-in when it was so cold I couldn't feel my fingers grasping my spare, emergency copy of the speech Toby Ziegler and I had written for the occasion. It was new, then, as was I, as were we all.

I ran across it again the day Josh returned to work, sore, stiff, scared, after we'd nearly lost him to the assassins' bullet. I pushed it aside and I uttered a prayer of thanks that I'd not needed to wear it-at least not that day.

By the next time I donned it, the new had worn off. Delores Landingham's coffin creased the shoulder as I joined my friends in bearing her to her final rest. Those were dark days, full of doubt and fear, with the President's illness and Impeachment looming over our heads like the proverbial sword of Damocles.

But those days passed and I wore it again, clutching in my cold-numbed fingers President Bartlet's second inaugural address. I put it away for the next four years, but found it inching forward in my closet as the President's body withered while, blessedly and cursedly, his brilliant mind remained intact.

During that time, I had thought to wear it at my best friend's wedding, but an occasion so long awaited and cherished deserved something much more festive. It was warm that bright spring day in Wisconsin, the bride's alabaster skin shielded by the lacy chuppah. They stood before vicar and rabbi, pronouncing a pledge they already lived. From that came life-a son- and I wore the suit again on his consecration day, and for his younger brother, and for the two sisters who followed.

In between those happy occasions, I took the suit out again to wear on the day I stood in the blazing North Carolina heat to ask a Republican father for his daughter's hand. He assented and I wore the suit again on the day I asked her. She consented, but insisted that our joining required attire more sumptuous than an old suit.

So, I put it away, with the happy memories, until a snowy February day when, on a hill in New Hampshire, I covered it, again with cashmere, this time adding a wool fedora. I wrote my last speech for Josiah Bartlet for that day, delivering it on behalf of what had been his Senior Staff. As we lowered his frail remains into the rocky soil that had produced his flinty personage, I picked at a thread that had loosened from the hem of the sleeve, leaving a tiny ravel seen only by me.

The suit had begun to fray a little, as had my youth, and I wore it again when, two years later on a hot August day, I returned my best friend to the bosom of Abraham. I stood beside his young wife and children, ashamed because I had allowed him to hide his illness from me, an illness that began on an ugly summer evening in Rosslyn, Virginia. I stood beside his grave, tears making dark splotches on the suit and pledged to care for his family as I would my own.

And I did, wearing the same old suit to plays and ballets, graduations and commencements, bar and bat mitvahs and First Communions. That suit traveled much in those years, from the heat of Carolina to the chill of Wisconsin, attending to the needs of two families, doing everything I could for mine and what my friend could not do for his. It gave away three brides (his two and my one) and stood beside four grooms (two of his and two of mine), all the time carrying its wear with weathered dignity.

It would seem logical that this old suit would serve me one last time but, my son, save it from that fate. As you read this simple note realize that this is more than a scrap of cloth artfully sewn. It is an artifact, a testament, to the wondrous warp and weft that has been the fabric of my life.

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