I roped Mama into a life of crime when I was only fifteen. I took full advantage of her seamstress talents and love for me to convince her to commit fashion fraud and elevate my humble wardrobe to full-blown designer status.
Not long after Pam in ninth-grade English put my discount store cardigan on blast before class one day I started my first job scooping ice cream. After saving up a month’s worth of paychecks I had enough to buy an honest-to-goodness Swatch shirt (from the sale rack, mind you) at a department store instead of the outlet store, and that first taste of unrestrained consumerism was intoxicating. Once I got home and more closely examined this tangible representation of roughly twenty hours of my life, I noticed that in addition to having the word SWATCH splashed gaudily across the front in print so large I’m certain it could be discerned from space, there was also a tag inside the shirt with the coveted brand’s name that could be repurposed to replace the Wrangler tag on my jeans! When I took my idea to Mama I’m sure she was wishing I could have repurposed my need to misrepresent myself into a need to earn an A in chemistry; still, she painstakingly removed the offending tag from my Sears-purchased denim and replaced it with the label I just knew would catapult me to sartorial stardom and launch me into social circles I previously believed possible only in John Hughes films.
Isn’t one of the funniest parts of getting older (and more nostalgic) realizing that the origin story some of us work so hard to put in our rearview mirror is the very story that can bring us comfort and belonging once we come to our senses? I find myself listening to the radio (the “oldies” country station—the only one that plays “real” country music anymore) and when I hear a Don Williams song, “Good Ole Boys Like Me,” perhaps, I am immediately transported to a Sunday in 1979. I’m lying on my stomach in front of the record player where Williams warbles about people and circumstances I don’t know and can’t fathom at the age of eight. A book, undoubtedly filled with horses, is open on the floor in front of me. I hear Mama in the kitchen, singing along to the album, frying potatoes in one cast iron skillet and cooking cornbread in the other while a pot of pinto beans simmers on the stovetop for supper. My dad is outside chopping wood and will return, flannel shirt flecked with dust and sap from the pine trees. Olfactory memories are every bit as strong as the mental snapshots of that time when none of us felt like we needed to “put on” in order to be acceptable and accepted. Life was simple, from the clothes we wore to the food we ate. And it was perfect, until I hit the age when “store-bought” meant “superior,” and homemade gravy and biscuits took a backseat to frozen pizza because my desire to assimilate with peers was greater than my need to be true to myself.
All the while I was balking at what I saw as the limitations of my provincial upbringing, I missed what was precious about it. Only in hindsight can I see how deep my family roots grew, even when I was doing everything in my power to deny them. In adulthood I sought, without realizing, a partner whose acceptance of me and pride in his own simple start remind me every day of the simplicity, truth, and grace of home. When we grow up knowing that on our best and worst days we can count on a built-in cheer section, and that even when nothing else in this world seems solid we have the iron-clad certainty of our family’s love, it provides an armor that protects us from any who mean us harm, and we naturally want to replicate that in the family we choose for ourselves.
My sweet family might believe that their finest gifts to me have come with hefty price tags, but it has been their ability to see value in me and remind me of it even when I least deserve it that has given my heart peace and my spirit courage. I know that with every Wrangler jeans-clad step I take in this world, I will feel them behind me and can count on them always to be.
PartWolf 