Nostalgia

Ahhh...to be young again.  Spring has sprung and summer is hot on it's tail.  That means spring and summer fashions are splattered all across the pages of various magazines.  I am a fashionista at heart.  Always have been.  I can remember being 18 and feeling a rush of excitement each month when the Cosmo issue came out.  I desperately yearned to be able to dress like the models brandished on the pages...alas, I was dirt poor. Well, maybe not dirt poor, but I certainly couldn't afford the high couture peddled therein.  That little detail, however; did not keep me from finding pieces that came very close to the originals.  Thus began a love affair with bargain brands.  It is a love affair I am still in the throes of.  The difference being that today, as a woman with a decent paying job, I can afford the likes of Ann Taylor, White House/Black Market, Chico's, and department stores like Dillards,Macys, and Nordstrom's.  And of course, now there are a variety of high-end outlets to troll.  There is nothing that compares to the feeling of reeling in a huge catch like say a pair of $300 Ann Taylor suede boots for about $100.  It's even better when friends give me gift cards for special occasions to my favorite fashion locales and, as in the case of the boots, my out-of-pocket is a mere pittance ($50 of the $100 for the boots).  I rarely, if ever, pay regular price for my fashion.  There is such a rush in hooking a great deal on clothes, shoes, and accessories.

But getting back to my wistful sentiment, it would really be nice to be young again.  Not only would I feel and look stronger, healthier, firmer, but I would be able to wear the current fashions available to women in their 20's and 30's.  This year, on Dec. 4th, I will turn 50.  And while I do wear platforms and high heels now, I can't help but acknowledge the encroaching cessation of that singular pleasure.  Today, as I peruse the pages of various fashion magazines, Cosmo still among them, I ardently wish I could wear the youthful fashions on display but the reality is that I must relegate myself to more age appropriate fashions.  Now I'm not talking matronly or staid but certainly not something twenty and thirty year olds can get away with.  For example, I can get away with wearing this as opposed to something like this which I would absolutely love to wear in this searing Texas heat.  Oh well, I suppose I will have to experience youthful fashion vicariously through my daughters, all three of whom are in their twenties, just as I do other aspects of their lives.  Thank goodness for them, they keep me young at heart.  At least as far as fashion is concerned, they are following in their momma's high heels.               

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First Love

He liked me, a lot...enough to drive over 20 miles in the opposite direction of our high school to pick me up every morning to take me and my best friend Kelly (his younger sister) to school.  I could tell right away that he liked me but I don't think it was quite so obvious to him.  In fact, I think he fought it the whole time, in part due to outside influences and in part due to a different type of influence, one that he was not able to overcome in the long run until it proved too late, which was sad because I would have married him.  Later, many years later, I learned that he and his wife (a friend of mine) had three sons.  I thought it ironic because I had had three daughters.  What were the odds that he would have three children, all male and that I would have three children, all female?  If we had married, would we have had three children together?  Would they have been three of the female persuasion or three of the male variety or would they have been a mix?  We'll never know.  It's ironic too, that years later, while in my forties, he happened to bump into my brother, asked him about me and said, "She's the one that got away". 

He was mean.  You know how we always tell little girls that so-and-so in her class doesn't really hate her when he pulls her hair or picks on her, it actually means he likes her, well that's how his meanness manifested itself?  He picked on me any chance he got.  Told me things like, "Your ass is big as Texas", when I wore my favorite pair of jeans that I bought back home in San Antonio because the state of Texas was stitched on a back pocket.  But the appreciation in his eyes belied the statement.  Or the time when he went through my purse, dumping it's contents on the floor and stole a tampon thinking it was something he could hang from the rear view mirror of his truck.  Kelly and I laughed so hard we came close to peeing our pants.  Or when he laughed his head off at me after I touched that electric fence around the hog pen just as Kelly yelled to me not to touch it.  Too late, I was fried.  Then, there was the time I was hanging out with Kelly at her house (which was all the time) and he asked me to go to town with him to meet up with his friends.  We drove less than a mile and he turned around and took me back.  He offered no explanation, just said, "Never mind, not this time" and took off down the road, tires kicking up red dirt and rocks.  That one hurt.  That one told me he was letting small-minded people and their ignorance into his head.  It was, after all, the 1970's in a small town in southern Georgia.  He had green eyes and dirty, dish-water blond hair and my hair was, as I liked to call it, strawberry-brown (lots of red highlights and medium brown tones), and my eyes were brown.  My last name was of Spaniard descent and his of Irish.  People couldn't look past my outer appearance, all they could see was difference...so he ignored his heart.

When he wasn't listening to his friends and the adults in his life about how wrong I was for him, we had moments of splendour, maybe not in the grass but definitely on hot vinyl seats, and the freshly vacuumed carpet outside Kelly's room.  We held hands, we kissed until our lips were raw.  We talked about who knows what for hours.  He held me in his arms.  Did I mention, he had green eyes?  When he grew a mustache, kissing for long intervals became painful.  I always felt as if I had just raked my upper lip across a carpet...carpet burn, ouch!  But I kissed him through the pain.  I really liked kissing him.  We went on dates, usually double dates, with Kelly and her current beau.  Riding around in his truck, parking in dark, secluded areas, or taking in a movie at the outdoor theater, these were the things we did together.  Some nights when I spent the night with Kelly he would come to her door and call me out.  Sitting just outside her door we would kiss, and talk, and kiss some more.  We were very fond of kissing.  Then, one day, we were separated forever.  I had to leave Georgia, my parents destroyed any love they had once had for each other...but that is another story, for another time.  There was nothing he and I could do about it.  If we had had more time, I believe he would have overcome all his doubts, as he eventually did but it was too late by then.  And so, I became "the one that got away".  He will always be, for me, the first taste of love.   

         

Write Something!

It's time to write...what the hell about, is beyond me.  I recently read a Pinterest pin...directives really, on a poster here that basically advises one to write, just write, about anything apparently, but I find even this small, seemingly unassuming edict difficult to do.  It supposes the ability to think coherently, which of course is necessary in order to write.  At least that's my thinking.  At any rate, it's very difficult to form any cohesive thoughts at 10 o'clock in the morning on a Monday, what with the constant walk-ins, the phone ringing, and people visiting each other to catch up on what grand and wonderful things they did this weekend, ad nauseam.  Did I mention that I'm at work?  Some of these fine folks like to repeat their weekend feats three and four times just in case you missed how wonderful and fascinating they are.  I don't understand  why bosses aren't roaming the halls, scratching their heads, in search of their wandering chroniclers.

Well, I suppose this is a start, it is writing after all.  Nothing grand, like say writing a paper on how to cure cancer and the like but it is a start.  The difficult thing will be writing on a daily basis and trying not to bore the hell out of people.

Oops...meant to publish this yesterday.