This morning there's a little junco sitting on my patio fence. I've been sitting very still to enjoy it, and not rushing away to find my camera.
Juncos are perfect tiny winter birds. They seem to be wearing black hooded parkas over their white tummies. Mother loved juncos, and we marveled often about how such tiny creatures were equipped to survive a harsh Nebraska January.
After Fritzi passed away, I brought a load of her clothes back to Texas. Emptying her closets had to be done, partly as a physical outlet for our grief. Some items were too nice or new to go to Goodwill. Trying on coats, I was surprised to find that some fit me. In my mind at least, Fritzi and I were never the same size.
It was a long time before I was comfortable wearing any of the clothes, although I enjoyed wearing certain pieces of her jewelry. Some things I realized I could never wear, but I saved Fritzi's junco parka. It is black and hooded, and longer than most, a very sensible coat for watching birds in winter. It makes me happy to wear it.
Click here for a nice Northern junco photo.
Showing posts with label clothes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clothes. Show all posts
Monday, January 21, 2008
Friday, August 10, 2007
Brown and white wren
Wren leaps in stage right
Over storage shed
& patio umbrella
To land on the fence rail
/flick tail/perpendicular/
Just as the last orange moment
Turns crayon Prussian blue
/90 degrees/pivot/flick tail/
Did you notice me?
Did you notice yet?
Next hop south
Right out of sight hop
& brown hot night
/Pivot tail/
Making sure you caught the runway model
In her vintage spectator shoes
To write home about it
Over storage shed
& patio umbrella
To land on the fence rail
/flick tail/perpendicular/
Just as the last orange moment
Turns crayon Prussian blue
/90 degrees/pivot/flick tail/
Did you notice me?
Did you notice yet?
Next hop south
Right out of sight hop
& brown hot night
/Pivot tail/
Making sure you caught the runway model
In her vintage spectator shoes
To write home about it
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Betsy McCall paper dolls
Mom subscribed to McCall's Magazine for many years, and I looked forward to the arrival of each new issue in hopes of finding a new Betsy McCall paper doll and story. Mom sewed nearly all our dresses and playclothes, using McCall's, Butterick, and Simplicity patterns. On a few occasions she made a dress just like Betsy's paper dress. It was great when Mom decided quickly on a Betsy McCall dress pattern. We spent so many, many, many hours of childhood seated at the pattern book tables in fabric departments agonizing over selections.
Mom made a brown dress for me just like Betsy's with the button-on yoke from McCall's September 1962 issue. Mom made it again in a royal blue border print with a white button-on yoke. 1962 was a wonderful year. I adored my second grade teacher, Mrs. Sandra "Cotton" Meier with her prematurely white hair. She encouraged me to write poems and stories (about three sentences long on lined newsprint paper) and to illustrate them with crayon drawings. My hair was cut shorter than Betsy's, and it was the last year I really liked my appearance for a long time.
Thanks so much to the Betsy McCall Paper Dolls web page for a lovely trip down memory lane.
Mom made a brown dress for me just like Betsy's with the button-on yoke from McCall's September 1962 issue. Mom made it again in a royal blue border print with a white button-on yoke. 1962 was a wonderful year. I adored my second grade teacher, Mrs. Sandra "Cotton" Meier with her prematurely white hair. She encouraged me to write poems and stories (about three sentences long on lined newsprint paper) and to illustrate them with crayon drawings. My hair was cut shorter than Betsy's, and it was the last year I really liked my appearance for a long time.
Thanks so much to the Betsy McCall Paper Dolls web page for a lovely trip down memory lane.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Old rose ramblings
I wore an "old rose" blouse today. Got it on sale, of course. It has sewn-in darts, woven stripes, and machine-embroidered embellishments. Fritzi would have approved, although she could have sewn a better-fitting one.
Chocolate brown has returned to the little girl fashion scene. My little students are wearing brown with pink, turquoise, or lime green, and it fills me with an irrational hope for the future. The color combo and the floral print corduroy tug deep in my core to a basic sense memory of what it is to be a little daughter safe, cherished, and nurtured.
When my sons were small I read a story written by Fred Rogers, yes, Mr. Rogers, about how our feeling of home and safety is connected with our earliest memories of colors, patterns, sounds, and smells. I've never been able to find the story again. It may be that it is more powerful to me because I can't find it, and therefore keep looking! The story told of a young woman who was seeking a Persian rug for her home. As a very young child she had moved often to places all over the world, but her parents had always taken one rug to each new location. The young woman was searching for a rug exactly like the one she had learned to crawl on as an infant, but she didn't know it. That pattern would connect with her earliest remembered experience of "home".
The annual blouse sale at the Miller & Paine Department Store Budget Shop on the lower level of Gateway Mall in Lincoln, Nebraska, just down the stairs from Kresge's, was a crazy event in the late Sixties. Women would stand in line for the chance to paw through the racks and get into the fitting rooms. The Budget Store was also the place to get day-old Miller & Paine bakery bread, cinnamon rolls, and crumb cookies, and I can smell each of them just remembering! I can also smell the tired linoleum floor tiles and a hint of sizing. The stairwell from Kresge's down to the Budget Store smelled of ancient popcorn, plastic floral wreaths, dirty snow, and parakeet cages.
Going with Fritzi to the blouse sale was an acknowledgment that I was becoming a young woman, which was very scary, uncharted territory. Fritzi wanted me to have new clothes for ninth grade. The blouses I chose would inspire her fabric choices and sewing efforts to create outfits. She would even knit a coordinating sweater vest. It was a heavy burden, given my mother's perfectionism. I knew these choices allowed no middle ground, no enjoyment of the shopping experience for its own sake. This was Red Rover all over again.
Still, I recall each of the six blouses as if the sale were yesterday. The "old rose" blouse was a simple short sleeve blouse with the sleeves folded up. I had never heard the phrase "old rose" before I went into the fitting room, and I was sure I would look like an elderly spinster great aunt. Instead, the color is one of the most flattering for my hair and skin.
My next choice was a delicate, textured pattern of pale yellow and sage green vines on an ecru background of wide seersucker with very full sleeves. Fritzi chose a sage green wool remnant to make a simple button-front jumper with brushed silver buttons. The wool made me itch, but I will keep choosing sage and silver combinations as long as I live.
The third blouse was white with tiny woven stripes of embroidered blue, pink, and yellow flowers. The leaves were pale green, so the blouse also went with the jumper. Thirty-eight years later, I seek out the embroidered fashions. Fritzi also made royal blue culottes to go with the blouse, and I was grateful they weren't wool.
Chocolate brown has returned to the little girl fashion scene. My little students are wearing brown with pink, turquoise, or lime green, and it fills me with an irrational hope for the future. The color combo and the floral print corduroy tug deep in my core to a basic sense memory of what it is to be a little daughter safe, cherished, and nurtured.
When my sons were small I read a story written by Fred Rogers, yes, Mr. Rogers, about how our feeling of home and safety is connected with our earliest memories of colors, patterns, sounds, and smells. I've never been able to find the story again. It may be that it is more powerful to me because I can't find it, and therefore keep looking! The story told of a young woman who was seeking a Persian rug for her home. As a very young child she had moved often to places all over the world, but her parents had always taken one rug to each new location. The young woman was searching for a rug exactly like the one she had learned to crawl on as an infant, but she didn't know it. That pattern would connect with her earliest remembered experience of "home".
The annual blouse sale at the Miller & Paine Department Store Budget Shop on the lower level of Gateway Mall in Lincoln, Nebraska, just down the stairs from Kresge's, was a crazy event in the late Sixties. Women would stand in line for the chance to paw through the racks and get into the fitting rooms. The Budget Store was also the place to get day-old Miller & Paine bakery bread, cinnamon rolls, and crumb cookies, and I can smell each of them just remembering! I can also smell the tired linoleum floor tiles and a hint of sizing. The stairwell from Kresge's down to the Budget Store smelled of ancient popcorn, plastic floral wreaths, dirty snow, and parakeet cages.
Going with Fritzi to the blouse sale was an acknowledgment that I was becoming a young woman, which was very scary, uncharted territory. Fritzi wanted me to have new clothes for ninth grade. The blouses I chose would inspire her fabric choices and sewing efforts to create outfits. She would even knit a coordinating sweater vest. It was a heavy burden, given my mother's perfectionism. I knew these choices allowed no middle ground, no enjoyment of the shopping experience for its own sake. This was Red Rover all over again.
Still, I recall each of the six blouses as if the sale were yesterday. The "old rose" blouse was a simple short sleeve blouse with the sleeves folded up. I had never heard the phrase "old rose" before I went into the fitting room, and I was sure I would look like an elderly spinster great aunt. Instead, the color is one of the most flattering for my hair and skin.
My next choice was a delicate, textured pattern of pale yellow and sage green vines on an ecru background of wide seersucker with very full sleeves. Fritzi chose a sage green wool remnant to make a simple button-front jumper with brushed silver buttons. The wool made me itch, but I will keep choosing sage and silver combinations as long as I live.
The third blouse was white with tiny woven stripes of embroidered blue, pink, and yellow flowers. The leaves were pale green, so the blouse also went with the jumper. Thirty-eight years later, I seek out the embroidered fashions. Fritzi also made royal blue culottes to go with the blouse, and I was grateful they weren't wool.
I wore the olive green shirt with the exaggerated cuffs and collar for my ninth grade photo. I tied a paisley scarf knotted like a necktie, and wished I looked more like a Mary Quant/Jean Shrimpton /Twiggy-esque model in my Yardley white lipgloss. There was only so much Edholm and Blomgren Photographers could do to make me look better! The photo shows a ninth-grader far more childlike and naive than most of my current third grade students.
The fifth shirt was a simple warm light blue. The color was so satisfying with the chocolate brown skirt and the brown and white groovy mod scarf around the neck! I was definitely channeling Petula Clark here, and not sleeping on the subway!
In those days I felt the most glamorous in the button-down-the-back peach blouse with the extravagant ruffled neck that made me look like a tropical fruit-flavored signer of the Declaration of Independence. Fritzi created a peachy tweed outfit of pantskirt and long vest with covered buttons. Then she knit a coral sweater vest, and found matching coral tights. How amazing that we dressed so nicely just to crank the journalism class mimeograph machine!
That blouse sale in my Wonder Years still tints my color choices. On some deep level it feels like home, both safe and with psychic baggage.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Tote Bag
I convinced Dad to fly home with just a canvas tote shoulder bag for a carry-on. He arrived here ten days ago worn out from hauling a duffel packed to the brim with stuff he didn't need to be dragging all around the Denver terminal just so he would have the Ted Kooser book, Delights and Shadows, snacks, and his prescriptions.
When we got to DFW this morning, I tried to get him checked in curbside so we could get rid of his luggage ASAP. The checker said he couldn't issue Dad bag tags. Fortunately, I decifered the mumbo-jumbo to mean Dad had been pre-selected for full security screening. He's eighty-two years old and looks really menacing. He's been known to rant about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Sam Walton, the pope, Bolton, Tom DeLay, The Media, Condie Rice, Saddam, and many more since back before Richard Nixon told the nation that sad, sad story about Pat's cloth coat and Julie and Tricia's little dog, Checkers. We went inside to the United counter to check in. I hadn't wanted to do it on-line in case the counter agent could give Dad a better seat than I had purchased for him. That's what happened on his way here. Since I was doing most of the talking to the counter agent, she asked if I would like to accompany Dad to the gate. This is a great thing to remember. I didn't know it could be done, but it made a huge difference. My savvy flyer friend didn't know it could be done, either, so that is why I am posting this. Maybe someone else can ease a departure for a relative. When I told the agent that I would like to accompany Dad to the gate, she checked out my ID and gave me a pass to go through security. That way I was there to interpret for Dad about his full belt buckle security screening, so he wouldn't get worried. I wonder if the baggage x-ray on his flight down here showed his fiendish fingernail clipper, so he was coded as a terrorist instead of a delightful Old Fart with chronic nail fungus. Once through security we went to McD's for coffee. We relaxed, and I figured out the timing for visiting the restroom and going on over to sit at the B30 gate. It's very different flying out from an international airport, than flying from the little airport in Lincoln, Nebraska. The flight boarded at least twenty minutes late, and Dad said he would have been very antsy waiting by himself. Many things have changed in the fifteen years since he last flew.
We chatted about the time my parents won a trip to New York City with some other engineers. This is one of my first major memories. I was in kindergarten in 1960. Mom sewed all the outfits she would wear on the trip. I still have tiny fabric scraps from the purple and gold irridescent weave for her cocktail dress, and for the lovely matching purple stole. I thought the outfits were incredibly glamorous. Just like today, the airline was United. Passengers back then received navy blue canvas bags of flight amenities--peanuts, matchbooks, barf bags, and possibly playing cards. I remember the canvas bags, since they soon ended up in our childhood play "dress-up box".
My parents visited FAO Schwarz in NYC in 1960. They brought back one toy for each of us. My toy was a Hasbro Fizzies Fountain. My brother got a toy airplane. My baby sister got an awesome wooden spinning merry-go-round toy with wooden people similar to later plastic Fisher Price people.
Mrs. Schidler was our babysitter while our parents were off on this amazing trip. Mrs. Schidler was pretty amazing, too, even if I can't scroll up an image of her from my memory data bank. She was a pancake batter artist! She could make any shape of pancake you could imagine.
When my parents returned to Lincoln, Mrs. Schidler and we three kids were watching from the open air observation deck. We could see Howie and Fritz walk down the roll-out stairway and across the concrete to the terminal. Looking back I realize they were two young sweethearts returning from a second honeymoon in the Big Apple.
When we got to DFW this morning, I tried to get him checked in curbside so we could get rid of his luggage ASAP. The checker said he couldn't issue Dad bag tags. Fortunately, I decifered the mumbo-jumbo to mean Dad had been pre-selected for full security screening. He's eighty-two years old and looks really menacing. He's been known to rant about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Sam Walton, the pope, Bolton, Tom DeLay, The Media, Condie Rice, Saddam, and many more since back before Richard Nixon told the nation that sad, sad story about Pat's cloth coat and Julie and Tricia's little dog, Checkers. We went inside to the United counter to check in. I hadn't wanted to do it on-line in case the counter agent could give Dad a better seat than I had purchased for him. That's what happened on his way here. Since I was doing most of the talking to the counter agent, she asked if I would like to accompany Dad to the gate. This is a great thing to remember. I didn't know it could be done, but it made a huge difference. My savvy flyer friend didn't know it could be done, either, so that is why I am posting this. Maybe someone else can ease a departure for a relative. When I told the agent that I would like to accompany Dad to the gate, she checked out my ID and gave me a pass to go through security. That way I was there to interpret for Dad about his full belt buckle security screening, so he wouldn't get worried. I wonder if the baggage x-ray on his flight down here showed his fiendish fingernail clipper, so he was coded as a terrorist instead of a delightful Old Fart with chronic nail fungus. Once through security we went to McD's for coffee. We relaxed, and I figured out the timing for visiting the restroom and going on over to sit at the B30 gate. It's very different flying out from an international airport, than flying from the little airport in Lincoln, Nebraska. The flight boarded at least twenty minutes late, and Dad said he would have been very antsy waiting by himself. Many things have changed in the fifteen years since he last flew.
We chatted about the time my parents won a trip to New York City with some other engineers. This is one of my first major memories. I was in kindergarten in 1960. Mom sewed all the outfits she would wear on the trip. I still have tiny fabric scraps from the purple and gold irridescent weave for her cocktail dress, and for the lovely matching purple stole. I thought the outfits were incredibly glamorous. Just like today, the airline was United. Passengers back then received navy blue canvas bags of flight amenities--peanuts, matchbooks, barf bags, and possibly playing cards. I remember the canvas bags, since they soon ended up in our childhood play "dress-up box".
My parents visited FAO Schwarz in NYC in 1960. They brought back one toy for each of us. My toy was a Hasbro Fizzies Fountain. My brother got a toy airplane. My baby sister got an awesome wooden spinning merry-go-round toy with wooden people similar to later plastic Fisher Price people.
Mrs. Schidler was our babysitter while our parents were off on this amazing trip. Mrs. Schidler was pretty amazing, too, even if I can't scroll up an image of her from my memory data bank. She was a pancake batter artist! She could make any shape of pancake you could imagine.
When my parents returned to Lincoln, Mrs. Schidler and we three kids were watching from the open air observation deck. We could see Howie and Fritz walk down the roll-out stairway and across the concrete to the terminal. Looking back I realize they were two young sweethearts returning from a second honeymoon in the Big Apple.
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