The Story Of The Clothes Hamper

By Michael Vander Velde

This is a story about a gift. It’s not a bicycle or designer clothes. This gift is a doll clothes hamper that my wife Laurie and I gave to two little girls. We sent a brief note with the clothes hamper that went like this: "Laurie and I hope you will like and appreciate this doll clothes hamper as much as we have. Although it may not be totally PC by today’s standards, it was when we acquired it. We are giving it to you along with this story.” 

We had been studying bonsai for many years, and in 1975 we decided to go to Japan to improve our bonsai skills. Laurie and I had always been fascinated with bonsai-style trees in the wild and had traveled frequently to see trees in California’s mountainous areas. In fact, all things Japanese had fascinated us for years. We also had friends living in the Tokyo area and knew that they would help us. We didn’t know how long we would stay, but we knew that every six months we had to leave Japan to renew our visas. In January 1976 we traveled to Hong Kong for that purpose. Laurie, in the meantime, had become pregnant. What women in those days would do, (and probably still do) is they would look at the pregnant person and use a lot of subjective physical criteria to predict the sex of the baby. Every woman we met would look at Laurie and say that she’s carrying the baby high or low, or that her belly is spread out, or is pointed in front. Based on this they all predicted that we would have a girl, and we believed them! We fully expected to have a baby girl.

While we were in Hong Kong, we went to the Communist department store to shop. At the time it was the best place to go for all kinds of wonderful and affordable items. While we were there, we saw this doll clothes hamper with the cutest Asian-looking, fabric-covered doll’s head centered on a padded bar or hanger. It had a cloth bag with two loops to hang it on the bar and a cloth loop on the back to hang it up. Since we were going to have a baby girl, what could be better for the baby’s bedroom than a clothes hamper? So we bought two of them, also knowing that we were going to have at least two children. We came back to the U.S.in late July still thinking that we were going to have our first girl.  Well, so much for intuition and predictions. In August, Josh was born. Perhaps you are wondering why Laurie didn’t have an ultrasound? At the time it was a new procedure, and we didn’t trust its safety.

Two years later, Laurie was pregnant again. This time, we knew we were going to have a girl. That’s what everyone said about how Laurie was carrying the baby, and we agreed. Again, no ultrasound for us, quasi hippies that we were. In April 1979, we went to Jewish Hospital in Saint Louis, Missouri with only girl names, certain that we were going to have a girl. Guess what? The baby was definitely not a girl, but a beautiful baby boy. It took us three days and a small tantrum by Laurie to finally decide on a name for Andy. Again, so much for intuition and predictions. And so much for the clothes hampers. We just didn’t think that they went with the boys’ rooms. We put them away, hoping that they would be used by our granddaughters that we knew that Josh and Andy were going to have. We’d just have to wait a while.

So we waited, and 28 years later, Andy and his wife Katie announced that Katie was pregnant. Being ever hopeful, we found the clothes hamper on a storage shelf, excited that we could surprise them with something special. Then we found out that they were expecting a boy.  When our grandson Sam arrived we just felt that it wouldn’t go with his room! Still no luck, but hopefully Josh’s wife Daria would become pregnant soon.

Our hopes came true. A few months later, Daria announced that she was expecting.  Like us, Josh and Daria refused to use ultrasound. So we waited for months, and we were pretty certain it would be a girl. Well, Shlomo definitely wasn’t a girl. So back on the shelf went the clothes hamper. When we were packing up our home in St. Louis, Missouri and preparing for our move to Santa Fe, New Mexico, we debated whether we should donate the hampers or take them with us. We decided what the hell, we had waited this long, we might as well take them along. You never know; maybe the next time we’d get a granddaughter.

Soon both Daria and Katie announced that they were expecting. It doubled the odds and our hopes rose accordingly. And again, as you may have guessed by now, we were disappointed that we didn’t get a granddaughter, but we were blessed with two more wonderful grandsons, Zev and Ollie. Back on the shelf the clothes hampers went. We just couldn’t part with them, but what were we going to do with them?

We waited and waited and finally, our friends, Norm and Lilly, from those long ago bonsai days in Japan, announced that their son and daughter-in-law, Courtney and Ann, had a new baby girl, Rozzie. Lilly expressed her enthusiasm for the story and the clothes hamper and said that I must put the story in writing for them. I’m not a confident writer, so I put the idea on the back burner.

But that isn’t the end of the hamper story. We soon found out that our daughter-in-law Katie’s brother and his wife had a baby girl named Vesper whose room would definitely need an Asian doll in the form of a clothes hamper. What were we to do? We had given both of the hampers away. One to little Rozzie and the other to the Folk Art Flea Market. All we could do was wait for the Flea Market, hope that no one would notice the clothes hamper and we could get it back. When the Market came, we were both so busy volunteering that we forgot about the hamper. As we were leaving for lunch, I said to Laurie, “Let’s look for the hamper.” It wasn’t where we thought it would be and started looking harder. After about fifteen minutes, we found it, still in its original bag but with a $10 price tag on it. For a few seconds, we thought that we ought to pass on it, but then we looked at each other and said, “No way.” We’d owned it once, and the $10 would go to a good cause. So we bought it for a second time. At Thanksgiving, we gave the hamper to Vesper’s parents and told them the above story. They also said I should write it up. 

So, finally, after all these years, here it is. At long last, the hampers are with little girls who will read this story when they grow up and appreciate that their hampers are not gathering dust on a shelf in our closet.