Commentary: Cold weather has her contemplating fur, gloves

I was thrilled to be invited to the home of dear friends in Boulder, Colo., for Thanksgiving. Jen and Mo live almost against the Flat Irons of the Rockies. I was afraid of freezing to death.

The first things into my suitcase were bed socks.

I am a thin-blooded Southern Californian. How would I keep warm as we shopped on Black Friday and Small Business Saturday? It could be as cold as 40 degrees.

Lee always said I have a one-degree comfort range of 72, but I’m actually good down to 68 (with a sweatshirt).

Jen said it would be fine for me to bring an array of sweatshirts from dressy to casual, and if I wanted, I could wear my white fox fur coat when we went shopping. (It had followed me home in the early 1980s, and Lee let me keep it.)

The coat hadn’t been groomed or refrigerated or even seen the light of day since animal activists made us aware that wearing animal furs was inhumane.

I couldn’t have given it away. If it was shameful for me to wear it, no one should.

But surely in snow country it would be tolerable.

So I took it out of its mesh bag, vacuumed it, hung it outdoors and Febrezed it.

My local friends gave me advice: Wear boots! Take scarves! Don’t forget gloves.

I practiced wearing my boots for a day to determine if I would be able to wear them for three days.

Ouch! No boots then. Socks and loafers or socks and dressy flats would have to do.

Scarves? I have dozens in my drawer. They attract me to buy them, but they don’t attract me to wear them.

Into the suitcase with those! But I couldn’t wear them with my fur coat.

My reversible, all-weather jacket went into the suitcase.

Gloves? Nobody wears them anymore. In my youth, a lady was never seen without them! I think it was in the ‘60s that women stopped wearing gloves to church and out to dinner.

I’d wrapped my mother’s gloves in tissue paper after she died, and I’d wrapped my own accumulation with them.

Mom’s collection includes several pair of white cotton and white kid gloves, lovely rose-colored gloves, and black gloves, including one pair with small gold studs above the wrist.

I unwrapped my own gloves too. Small, white gloves from my grammar school years. String gloves, probably for church at Eastertide. White full-length prom gloves, ruched along the seams, from my ‘50s high school years. Black mid-length gloves I wore with my smashing ‘60s-college-years’ black cashmere coat with the push-up bat sleeves, and a chiffon scarf over my hair — like Audrey Hepburn wore hers — the ends wrapped around and tied at the back of my neck.

Early in my divorce years, my mother gave me red leather driving gloves after I’d bought my first car to drive to work in the cold San Fernando Valley mornings. Seeing those red gloves again brought tears to my eyes.

I tucked my mother’s black gloves with the studs into the pockets of my fur coat.

We had a glorious time!.The daytime temperatures in Boulder were in the low-60s. I was warm enough to be comfortable in my sweatshirt and all-weather jacket as we shopped in the charming shops. I never even needed the gloves.

I wore my white fox only in the airports, and I got a lot of compliments.

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LIZ SWIERTZ NEWMAN occasionally writes columns for Times Community News.