HOW IT USED TO BE

Earlier this evening my daughter and I went shopping. She was a bit flustered from getting herself and her daughter ready to go. She called it a wardrobe crisis and I knew just what she meant.

I have always enjoyed clothes. I was one of those little girls that wore a dress all the time, no matter what the activity or season.  Dressing nice was important to me as soon as I became cognizant of dressing. I think it might be genetic because my daughter at 9 months crawled to her room, took dirty clothes from her hamper and managed to pull them over her head. I figured she was letting me know she didn’t like what she was wearing. My granddaughter is just over 2 and has been seriously interested in clothes for a long time. She also likes to choose what she wears.

My mother also took great care to dress nice. She always made our clothes. That meant my wardrobe was one of a kind. When I did get a dress that mom didn’t make we called it a ’store-bought’ dress. I had very few of these.

When I was 7 years old my mother taught me to sew. By the time I was 11, I was the one making my clothes. In high school I had to wear a uniform. Talk about thwarting the fashion sensibilities. But in many ways the uniforms were a help because I would sew during the week and wear my creation to the Friday night dance. Every week it was a different outfit. I was comfortable with clothes. I knew what I liked. I knew what colors looked best on me and I had a very large wardrobe. Sewing enabled me to become a clothes horse.

Then I got married. Yep, I married a wardrobe wrecker. A wonderful fella who thinks he has fashion sense.

Not long after our wedding I was making a dress to wear to church. I had everything finished but the hem. Standing in front of the mirror I was deciding where to hem it when Herman came in. I was loving this little dress. It felt good on and looked good too. I stood in front of the mirror happy with my newest creation when he said, ” Is that the way it’s supposed to look? ” Now what did that mean? I said, “Yes, it’s really cute isn’t it?” He said, “Well, I guess it will be okay.” What exactly was he talking about? I said, “Don’t you like it?” His answer, “O yeah, it’s a really nice dress.” That was the first time I felt my clothes sense going off kilter.

I left the room, took the dress off and threw it in a box of fabric scraps. I never finished it. From that moment on I haven’t had the same sense of comfort with my clothes.

We discussed the whole issue shortly after. He apologized for not telling me how cute the dress was. But by then the seeds of doubt had started a garden in my mind. I had doubt flowers about my sense of fashion blooming everywhere. My shoes, my hairstyle, my make-up or lack thereof. I was a crippled clothes horse! I still loved clothes but had lost my ability to know what I liked or looked good in. And it took years to even diagnose what crippled me.

The problem was my desire to please my husband, to be a good wife and listen to his advice. In most things it’s been important to listen to him. Like when I don’t get enough salt on the potatoes or the tire needs more air. But when it comes to my clothes I wish I had never asked him the first time, “Honey, how do I look?”  He’s just not qualified to answer. It’s like asking a dentist if you need glasses or a mechanic to fix your plumbing. Their expertise is in another field altogether.

When did I discover this? This evening when my daughter who has a great sense of fashion said she tried on 5 different outfits because one by one her husband said they didn’t look good on her.

It only took 35+  years to realize Herman doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He wants to help. He doesn’t want to let me down by simply saying, “You know what I have no idea about this kind of thing.”  So instead he answers.

What was I thinking?

(Here’s the song “What Was I Thinkin’” by Dierks Bentley)