NORTHAMPTON — Sunglasses, notebooks, outerwear. These are items that commonly end up in the lost-and-found at Woodstar Café, according to assistant manager Becca Lloyd-Hahn. But it’s not every day that someone leaves behind a child-sized denim jacket with felt cutouts of two breasts hand-stitched onto the back of it, below the words, in hot pink, “EAT LOCAL.”
“This jacket is definitely one of the most exciting things that we’ve had,” Lloyd-Hahn said. And because it seemed like an item its owners would miss, she added, the café posted on its Facebook page in search of the jacket’s owners: “Anyone know who it belongs to? It looks like it may have some sentimental value.”
It didn’t take long for commenters to offer to claim it. “Look,” wrote one, “I don’t know who its biological owner is, but I will give it a good life and raise it right because my love for it is undying.” After the Facebook page Only in Northampton shared the post, another commenter offered to give the jacket a home, but the rightful owners were quickly found.
The jacket belongs to Easthampton parents Leah and David Cantler and their son, Ezra Lev, who is 1 ½ years old. Friends reached out to the Cantlers as the post circulated on social media.“I got this barrage of texts and emails,” said Leah Cantler. “They knew it was ours.”
In the cool, late spring, Cantler and her son met a friend at Woodstar and left the jacket behind. The family was out of the country for the summer, and with the warm weather, she didn’t notice it was missing until a few days ago.
Woodstar was right: The jacket does have sentimental value. Leah Cantler’s sister-in-law, Eve Cantler, designed the bespoke breast jacket, from a used jacket she found in Seattle, and gave it to Ezra Lev last Hanukkah when he was about 10 months old.
“It’s hand-dyed felt, and she sewed it onto the jacket,” Leah Cantler said.
It also has a message she supports. “I’m a big proponent of breastfeeding if it’s possible,” said Cantler, a social worker who specializes in therapy for families and young adults. “Not everyone can do it, and not everyone wants to.”
For those who do, breastfeeding in public can be met with negativity, she added: “People all the time feel uncomfortable being in public and feeding their child because of people looking at them, looking at their body in a sexualized way or a negative way — like that should be done in private.”
Cantler had a name for her public nursing sessions. “I would call them breast-ins,” she said. “I’m feeding my child. I’m not whipping my boobs out to you. I felt this real statement of, ‘This child is eating local food, and it happens to come from me.’”
Cantler recently stopped breastfeeding but has done it at Woodstar Café, among other local spots. “I breastfed all around the town,” she said. “Anywhere I’ve taken my child, I’ve breastfed. Planes, trains and automobiles, I’ve done it all.”
She mentioned that she’d like to see better laws for parents. “It’s hard being a breastfeeding parent and working,” Cantler said. “Not all people are given the right to pump at work.”
As for Ezra Lev, he has worn the jacket while breastfeeding, while taking in the sights at Noho Pride and while playing on the playground. “I have him wear it as often as possible,” his mother said. “I think it’s the raddest jacket ever.”
Does Ezra Lev know the jacket’s meaning? “I think he has no idea,” Cantler said. “He’s 1 ½, and he says the words ‘ball,’ and ‘woof woof,’ which means dog.”
Ezra Lev’s jacket is the first of its kind, but Eve Cantler has plans to make more. “I’m having her make one for a friend of mine,” Leah Cantler said.
“She’ll customize it with your skin color and the type of breasts you have,” she added with a laugh. “I do think she should make them in adult sizes.”
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.