s is for summer dresses

(this is a re-post-- i had written something for s today but decided i wanted to put this up instead)


hadn't planned to blog and or write today--but as i have told you, it hits me and haunts me sometimes until all i can do is get it over with--not knowing mostly where the thoughts or ideas will lead exactly but today it is a feeling---one i am not confident i will be able to convey, but i shall try--


a quick trip to the mall today with robyn, had us exiting through one of the women's clothes departments---and there is where i stopped to touch it to let it take me back to my mother's summer dresses---

it seems some of the styles she wore when i was a child are returning or maybe it was just the delicate mix of the floral colors, that brought her image rushing back to me in a flood of emotions--


i could see her on a Sunday afternoon, sitting on the front porch of my grandmother's house, my dad's mom--"queenie"---


as a child we would go there for dinners---straight from church--so mama would never change her clothes----in the summer or even early spring, it would be hotter to her than a sauna---she would have her stockings on and girdle----she was quite miserable and the fans in the piano bench were always taken out and used profusely by her and my dear aunt alice---



lily my great aunt, would always be in a sweater, as she had a stroke years before, she was often cold even in the hottest of days-


my mom always thought she was enormous and we all tried to tell her, that she could take her hose off and she didn't need to cover up her arms---but she never did and always did-


today i could smell her chantilly and hear her funny laugh---but most of all i could remember her dresses and the searches for them-


the many shopping trips with her, the trips downtown, the way the car felt when we returned to it on a hot summer day----the way we fought over my clothes, the way she told me then, what i tell my daughter---and now how i see how much joy she must have felt, when we found that perfect dress--the one that she and i both loved and the rarity of that occasion-


but most of all i see her-i see her as she was, so full of life---her legs making that scratching noise as she crossed them and made that look at me--the look that she thought no one else saw--the look that meant, i am dying out here on this porch, i can't wait to come home and take these clothes off and get in my "house-coat"----which she wore to extreme---

yes the summer dresses only worn on Sundays, are what brought me back today and made me sad and regretful and nostalgic---

when i see her next how i hope it will be in the summer on a Sunday