Wednesday, August 15, 2007

I remember trying on gloves....

I have a 13 year old daughter, and she is often looking at some new shirt I have and saying "No fair, how come you get all the cool clothes?" and we end up sharing sometimes. I start with this to contrast it with my mother's clothes. Never once in my childhood or teenage years did the thought of wanting to wear my mother's clothing ever occur to me. Her clothing was UGLY, all polyester and fortrel, just awful!!!

Except for the gloves. My mother had a box on the top shelf of her closet, and if my younger sister and I asked nicely, we could take it down. It was full of gloves. There were little white gloves with lace around the wrist. There were long black gloves that pulled up to our armpits. There were orange gloves, green gloves...so many gloves! We had never seen Mom wear these, but we knew that sometime in her past, she must have. This made her mysterious to us, because she didn't seem like the type of woman to wear something as fancy as gloves.

We'd put on the gloves, tie a scarf in our hair, and pretend we were rich. I'd put on the sparkly silver gloves, find some sunglasses, and pretend I was a movie star. Pam would put on the long black gloves and pretend to be a grieving widow....we would take them on and off for hours, pulling them off with our teeth like some vamp in an old movie.

I don't know where the outfits went that matched all of those glamorous gloves. I'll bet they weren't ugly. I'll bet I would have wanted to borrow them.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice memory, Paula! I'll bet you and Pam were quite elegant!

My mom had a sophisticated friend with a beach apartment. It was a treat to visit her, play at the beach, then go back to her apartment, take a bath in her pink bathroom, wrap up in a fluffy pink towel and sit at her very fancy dressing table. She had powder with puffs, bottles of perfume and all kinds of exotic combs and brushes. She was single, and thought kids were "fun," so I was allowed to touch her things and pretend I was getting ready to "go out." Heady stuff for a six year old!

Spoke said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Spoke said...

I don't ever recall wanting to wear any of mum's clothing. Well, that's not entirely true...she had a pinky-orange corduroy jump suit that zipped up the front. Any one of those James Bond girls would have worn it in an instant.
That would've been cool to try on....ahem.

RC said...

i guess for better or worse the general gap in clothing style between girls and women is shrinking. :-)

Anonymous said...

There is something about gloves. They are glamorous and beautiful no matter what. They mean elegance and living in a black and white movie with someone like gene kelly dancing in and taking your gloved hand. This memory is so beautiful, I'm pretty sure my daughters would avoid and be terrified of my clothes.

Belladonna said...

I loved this post! It unleshed a few of my own - those odd nuggets I would discover about my mother that were totally contradictory to the woman I thought she was.

Anonymous said...

Hey Paula! It's been a MONTH since you've posted! I hope you haven't used up all your memories!!!!

Christopher Newton said...

I wonder whatever happened to that Paula person who used to write such an interesting blog about her life as a Sex Pistol. I think. It's been so long since she wrote anything that it's all getting fuzzy. Has she gone on a long trip into inner space perhaps? Will she come back sort of like Rip Van Winkle and no one will remember who she is?
Hey Paula - your public needs you!