Role models and skirts

In the middle of the night I thought of two things to add to my ageing list. 

One was prompted by the thoughtful responses to my post; the other just made sense at 3:00 a.m.

It is interesting how many of us refer to the great examples of our mothers.

Add that to the list. 

Do a good job of ageing so our kids will have some points of reference when this is their life stage. Think of the people you know who are really proud of their mom/dad/relative who is off doing things and very busy, they speak of them like legends. The real unspoken thing they are telling you is "old age, my old age, doesn't have to be scary, look at them."

I think we have an obligation to do what we can to have other people take heart and to show our children how not to be afraid when we can. This is a real gift to give them.

My second thought it that you have to devote, devote, yourself to being creative. Being alive is about creativity isn't it? There is nothing more age-defying than continuing to create. 

It's about the adding to, not the taking away of life. 

Craftspeople of any age are age-irrelevant. I have a friend whose 80 something mother was up Christmas Eve knitting dishcloths on order. Beats being the old dear sitting in the living room while they talk in the kitchen "someone go talk to Grandma."

See, I knew in some way this was all going to justify me buying more fabric.

On another subject I marked a paper last night from an interesting student who was supposed to do an organizational audit. Instead she did a project on behaviour in the military (she is in the reserves) and one of the things she looked at was the wearing of skirts by female personnel. 

You see they have the option of wearing skirts instead of pants in the military when they are in dress uniform or doing office, not in the field, work. 

I, of course, was fascinated. 

What she discovered from interviews was that the skirt is a "gendered garment". Men don't wear it, so some of the women wore it in a male environment because when they put on a skirt they felt they got some of their identity back. This is interesting because other women said they had initially worn only pants to fit in or to be taken seriously, but that once they were more secure they liked wearing a skirt.

I had never thought before really about skirts and dresses as being a gendered garment, and I then thought of the pants I was wearing (fly front) and wondered at how I wear things that are unnecessary and male.

I personally find skirts and dresses the most comfortable garments to wear (and yes thanks Carolyn the easiest to sew too) and I wonder about the transference to pants wearing in the work place and in home life. 

There are many occasions when pants are best - cold weather and some kinds of work but tights and leggings have extended dresses and skirts here too - and when I just will always wear them.

But the question is does wearing a skirt or dress change how you feel about yourself?

On A line skirts and silverware

I had a great time in the States and am back at home now alone in the house with the two dogs doing the last six weeks of term. (Youngest son is surfing for six weeks in Indonesia, yes I know the tsunamis, if you have a prayer list put Ben on it, I already have my mom and dear mother-in-law on the case, what can you do? Kids drive you crazy).

I loved Tennessee and once I was down there and met the folks DH is working with and understood that the work was very interesting and that they needed him I felt better about him being there. He really enjoys his career and this is the most interesting thing he has ever done. I also think Southerners are terrific and very much in some ways like people here on the East coast of Canada, very polite and pretty laid back.

I also had a great time in Washington with my middle son who now lives and works there. He too is doing great and I can really see he is in his element. The fact is his element isn't here anymore, nothing personal Mom, and in fact if he could live in New York he would. He told me that if he can he would just like to stay in the States because that's where he's happy. He has outgrown this place.

All perfectly reasonable if you are a 26 year old guy but not the kind of statement that brings out my best behaviour. I have, in middle age, developed a wonderful ability to start crying at any time, and the rule of sons is You Never Cry. However I did and of course wish I hadn't. I just kept having these old images of him.

Anyway the thing that bothers me most is that this kid doesn't really need me right now. That is hard for me. I am a doer, I sew, sometimes I would rather be in the kitchen at a party doing the dishes and talking to one person that out in the front room making small talk. I would rather walk your dog than sit and have tea. 

The fact is what does a 26 year old guy need a 56 year old mother for? Right now not much. I sat in my hotel room and figured this out. It is that right now he is working out a good life for himself and there really isn't a role in it for me. Probably shouldn't be either.

He and I are and have always been very close and this is something I have to work through. You see I help my daughter a lot, I babysit, I do her errands when she is home sick, and I do things for my surfer son too. While he is away I am taking care of his dog and I have a list, for example a summer course I have to enrol in for him. I don't want to be in the middle of their lives, and I am not, but I am needed and have a role. 

Which leads me to the silverware.

My son has been eating off some cheap plastic cutlery but found the previous tenant had left a large wooden box of old silver. While I was there he asked me how to clean it and I told him he had to get some Silvo and that I wanted to clean his silver for him. He of course told me I was crazy and I didn't come all the way to Washington DC to do his housework (man I would have paid him a $100 for the chance to get down on my knees and do his floors, you wouldn't believe the dust I saw on those baseboards too).

I will now turn this over to his conversation with his sister, as reported by my daughter who found the whole thing hysterical:

D: How was your visit with Mom?

S: Great but she had a complete nervous break down in Bath and Beyond.

D: How so?

S: She was clutching two bottles of Silvo and she grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go and her eyes filled up with tears and she said through clenched teeth "You-have-to-let-me-clean-your-silver." Completely lost it in the store.  Even wanted to take it all back to the hotel with her and clean it at night. Like she wouldn't look like a crazy woman going up the elevator in downtown DC with a box full of silver and two bottles Silvo.

S: I don't get it. She is such an intelligent woman, so smart and funny and then she goes just nuts. This isn't who she is.

Well I am sharing this story so the next time you go berserko  with one of your children you have a very high standard to judge your own behaviour against. I think I have set the bar pretty high here for a performance by a poorly adjusted needy mother.

Obviously I have a little work to do here. Somewhere along the line I had the idea that I was going to get smarter as I got older. Unfortunately it appears that in middle age you have to learn it all over again and in fact the challenges and learning aren't going to stop. 

Damn.

But obviously I am going to get this together. No point in taking a great relationship and eroding it because you can't adapt. Not going to do that.

I have been thinking about a family member who has always referred to my children as coming from a "broken home" even though that was a long time ago, even though I have very happily remarried. (Thank you mom for always saying, "no that's a healed home.") This same person has also said on several occasions that she wondered if this son moved away because of the disruption of the divorce, as in if their dad hadn't left he wouldn't have either. It has been really hard on me wondering if I blew it.

But you know it's not about me at all, it's about him and really he just is happy with the life he is making for himself.

All mothers should be this lucky.

Which brings me seamlessly to the issue of an A line skirt.

When I got home I got a bit of a flu and rather than doing more work, work that had piled up while I was away, I decided I needed some restorative sewing, but nothing too demanding.

I had read somewhere in one of the library borrowed style books that every woman should own an A line skirt. Well I haven't owned or worn one since high school. I have been making just about every other style of skirt since and mostly wear lined straight skirts with a back vents to work. I actually hate sewing those skirts. I hate sewing back vents, I find them fussy, and these skirts are something I make because I need one, not something I want to sew.

I also realized that as of the end of this month I am taking three months off and won't be needing any new work clothes until the middle of the summer.

So I dragged out my old Ottobre's and found a pattern for a basic slightly A line skirt that had received great reviews on Pattern Review and found some old corduroy that I had bought for I don't know what a while ago ( a bag?) I also have not sewn corduroy since high school.

I cut it out and did the zipper, seams, darts and lining last night and hope to finish this today with an invented elastic faced top. The pattern calls for Petersham which I have used before and didn't like - a bit like wearing a tape measure around your waist all day IMO.

I have nothing that will go with this skirt, being trapped in black and grey for years, but will see how it goes.

Oh, and I forgot. My son did say that he would be interested in me making some shirts. I have a few nice pieces from Michael's in Baltimore and amazoned David Coffin's shirtmaking book yesterday. Must start some shirt research of my own too.

It's a start on the road to recovering some of my common sense, I hope. But I sure want to make those shirts pretty great.