technorati tags: women, outing, Indian silk skirt, mother and daughter.
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.
Friday, August 11, 2006
An Outing
Eventually we leave. It takes a long time to dress ourselves. I iron a nectarine red rayon skirt with bouquets of yellow and orange flowers with green stems, then change to an Indian silk wrap around skirt. I worry that the heat of the steaming iron will melt the delicate fabric. The patchwork squares are an array of colours and designs; each one singular, from floral to geometric, vivid colours of flowers to earth tones. A cantaloupe orange camisole surprisingly matches. She spends an hour changing behind her closed door. When we leave, she is wearing black pedal pushers and a crunched cotton empire sun-top the colour of the tangerine moon. Afterwards, she said men looked at her on the streets.
technorati tags: women, outing, Indian silk skirt, mother and daughter.
technorati tags: women, outing, Indian silk skirt, mother and daughter.
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A "sentence" a day ~ it's surely not difficult, but it can take an hour to compose!
ReplyDeleteThe final conversation was much longer, with me talking about whistles and cat calls through the years and not missing that at all, and she said men are more polite now, and it's true, they are. I recommended enjoying the attention because it doesn't last, though I did acknowledge that older men sometimes still, and she nodded, and said, "Yes, I've seen them looking at you."
But the piece would have lost its irony, and become another kind of statement. Which made it all too complicated and I needed to go to bed (we walked through the city to Kensington market, about a 5 hour walk, for lunch and shopping.) And we took our dog, who at 7 years old is still as peppy as a puppy.
I loved this piece because of the irony, because it portrays a kind of innocence I remember distinctly from a certain age... the age a girl is readying but not ready for the fullness of the world and it's all still a little too complicated and unexpected and disconcerting and uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteMB, I love your comment, of course! And, for me, leaving the arena, a sort of passing of the baton, which I am thoroughly enjoying. We are 38 years apart. It seems such a huge span sometimes, and other times seems almost not to exist at all. Blessings on our daughters, MB, heaps of blessings...
ReplyDeleteWow Brenda. You are rolling right now. You are capturing so much - taste, scent, color, heat, love, intensity... all without saying "too much" and taking the personal eye from your reader...
ReplyDeleteJust keep up what you are doing...