The Living Archive: Notes to My 94-Year-Old Self—D is for Dress-Up Box
D is for Dress-Up Box: The Suitcase of Other Selves
The historian in me knows where to look for proof of a life: census lines, draft cards, death certificates—the paper scaffolding of existence. But in the “Living Archive” I’m building for my future self and my descendants, some of the sources are made of fabric, perfume, and dust.
Today’s artifact isn’t a document. It’s a treasure chest of imagination disguised as a battered vintage suitcase.
The Suitcase of Miracles
The Dress‑Up Box entered my life one sun‑blurred afternoon, carried home from a yard sale held by our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Winkelstern. In my memory, she is less an old woman and more like a character from a children’s book—the fabulous wish‑granter from Barney Bipple’s Magic Dandelions, someone who might keep secrets in hatboxes and grant wishes in between watering her azaleas.
When my mother snapped open those brass locks, the air that tumbled out of the suitcase felt older than our house. Inside was an inventory from another century: white gloves with tiny pearl buttons; structured wool hats resting in their original, tissue‑lined boxes; and furs that smelled faintly of mothballs and Manhattan winters, including a single, elegant muff.
I only ever knew her as the woman down the block, but a little digging today brought not only my own life but hers into sharper focus. Born Marie Coviello, I found her 1938 wedding announcement, promising that she would marry Alfred Henry Winkelstern on Easter Sunday at a small parish church that still stands not far from where I’m writing this.
She was twenty‑three.
Tomorrow is Easter.
This morning, when I still didn’t know what I would write about for “D,” perhaps she whispered in my ear from some other ethereal realm. Mrs. Winkelstern was likely the original owner of the old‑champagne colored satin muff; perhaps she first buttoned those white gloves with a bride’s shaking hands.
She came of age in our small town during an era when stagecoaches gave way to rail lines, when glass‑front bakeries and shops dotted the avenues, and when a street near where I sit writing this now was known colloquially as “Petticoat Lane.”
Six‑year‑old me only saw a widow who had gifted me a magical suitcase.
Today, I see a young bride stepping out of church on a spring morning, who unknowingly preserved a private archive of make-believe elegance for a little girl she had not yet met.
The Portal in the Closet
The Dress‑Up Box lived in my bedroom closet behind a narrow wooden door that swelled in the summer heat and dragged against the jamb. Opening the door was tricky, and naturally, I assumed the portal to Narnia was at its back, if only I could push past the last row of hangers.
I would desperately try to go through, pressing myself against the darkness, groping for the cold rush of elsewhere. But when that failed, I did the next best thing: I opened the suitcase.
Before screens projected other people’s stories at us, and boredom wasn’t viewed as something to be solved, my bedroom floor was a stage. Cross‑legged on the carpet, I would settle a hat over my eyes and instantly transform into someone else: a duchess on a fogbound pier, a detective with a valise of clues, or a woman of mystery boarding a train to tomorrow.
The cache of costumes grew over the years: a pink feather boa, clip-on rhinestone earrings that pinched, a tricornered Napoleonic hat. But the magic always lived in those originals, the clothes that had once gone out into the world on someone else’s shoulders and come home to rest on mine.
The Slaying of the Suitcase
Like any good character, the suitcase had a dramatic exit.
One afternoon, a rusted latch snapped shut, carving a deep, sudden line across my mother’s hand. The blood surprised me, so bright and decisive. The Dress‑Up Box left its mark; the cut on her hand healed and became her “dueling scar.”
When the suitcase was retired, its contents simply migrated, smuggled into plastic bins and cedar chests. The costume pieces outlived their first container, the way stories outlive their original tellers. Even today, that spirit is stubbornly portable.
Just this morning, I found my youngest playing contentedly on the floor, sitting in nothing but his diaper, wearing an elephant trunk, trumpeting at the couch.
Imagination rarely retreats; it only changes costume.
The Mask and the Archive
Long before anyone filed a deed or took a census, people painted their faces in ash and ochre or wrapped themselves in skins to become someone else. To dress up has always been to cross a threshold and test the boundaries of who we might become.
Dressing up must run in the blood, as that same itch to transform shows up in my own family tree.
My ancestor Hamilton Bernard Hendrickson—known onstage as Hamilton Alvin—spent his youth as one half of the Alvin Bros., comedy acrobats and vaudevillian pantomimists.
The stage was his own dress‑up box, full of exaggerated gestures and borrowed faces.
Here, the archive bites back.
The company that carried the Alvin Bros, AL. G. Field’s Greater Minstrels, built its success on blackface and caricature. Hamilton lent his white body to that machinery of mockery. Newspaper clippings show him and his partner performing an act called “A Circus Nightmare,” tumbling and contorting for laughter that rested on a foul foundation.
It’s impossible to see the human need to transform without also recognizing the harm those transformations can inflict when they depend on someone else’s degradation.
With the rise of moving pictures, Hamilton left the stage and became a shipping clerk in the Bronx. Perhaps it was his final costume change; a man stepping out of the spotlight and back into the undramatic fabric of his ordinary life.
The Legacy of Transformation
I can almost smell the faint powder of Mrs. Winkelstern’s gloves again and remember the fierce, almost holy beauty of becoming someone else for a little while.
Mrs. Winkelstern lived to 100. Among the many legacies she left are my memories of the Dress-Up Box and the magic it held. Wonder is its own kind of heirloom: a fragile inheritance from the people who let us play, try on, and imagine.
If we are fortunate, we don’t keep it in storage; we pass it down, tucked into old suitcases and new stories, waiting for the next small pair of hands to lift the lid.
Maybe the real work of a living archive is simple: to name the objects that once helped us become ourselves.
Which ones belong on your list? And have you written them down yet?
Sources:
Golden Jubilee of the Incorporated Village of Lynbrook, N.Y., 1911–1961. Lynbrook, NY: Village Jubilee Committee, 1961.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (April 10, 1938, page 26): Marriage of Marie Coviello and Alfred Winkelstern.
The Ann Arbor News, November 10, 1910. reviewing the Al. G. Field Greater Minstrels featuring the “Alvin Bros.” comedy acrobats and their act, “A Circus Nightmare.”
What a lovely memory of the "dress-up" box.
What magical writing-takes me back to my early days of imaging other worlds. Mine that I can remember was usually also with book in hand to read the lines and act the day away. I still own a box of “props” we call them now, and love the idea of adult cos-play. 😍