Some years ago I came up with a brilliant idea for a Purim costume for myself. I would take my white and black and blue handwoven Mexican blanket to a seamstress, with instructions to make a hole in the center. Then I would tie thick tzitzit on the corner and don my fabulous gigantic tallis katan poncho. Of course this would be topped off with a big sombrero, and voila! our Jewish Mexican Caballero is decked out for Purim parties and shlach manos deliveries.

The first year I dawdled over the idea until it was too late. The next year, as Purim drew near, I got serious. My plans were all in place, and then I went to dig out the blanket. But it was nowhere to be found.

After an extensive search, I asked my wife if she happened to know where the blanket was. She replied with those dreaded words that test a husband’s love for his wife: “That tattered old thing? I tossed it out two months ago.”

I was crestfallen. My big plans dashed on the rocks. And of course I suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia for that “tattered old thing” I had bought 15 years earlier as a teenager on a road trip in Mexico with some buddies. The last time I felt that pang of loss for a discarded object was when I learned my wife had gotten rid of my mountaineering boots. She couldn’t fathom why they should possibly be taking up storage room over a decade after I moved to Israel, where there’s hardly a patch of snow to be found. Did I really think I would one day have the opportunity for another jaunt in the Sierra Nevadas?

Every year, come Purim time, I try to come up with a good costume, but never seem to hit on an idea as good as that tzitzit poncho costume that wasn’t.