Playing Dress Up!

 

When I was a little girl my mom started a dress up box for me.  It was a big box, not big enough for a washer or dryer but big, and she would buy me dress up clothes at the church rummage sale and garage sales all the time.  One of my favorites was a tulle (that really rough old tulle not the soft stuff like nowadays.) tan dress similar to the ones above with a floor length deep coffee brown satin jacket over it.  Thankfully it had the satin ribbons to hang it with so we used those as straps.  It was from the 40's or 50's.  And I remember her buying me jammies like these blue ones.  They were yellow and it is a jump suit with those ruffles around the ankle too.  My dad said I looked like Big Bird when I wore them!

Night gowns and robes like this were what she loved finding at yard sales and the Good Will Store

When we wanted to play weddings, we had sheer curtains that we wore on our heads.  I am trying to remember how we held them on our heads, we must have used barrettes and bobby pins.  We would often dress up and then go sit on the swing set in my back yard and sing at the top of our lungs!  I am sure the neighbors loved us!  Dress up was fun for us.  Sometimes my mom let me play in her makeup - She sold Avon back in the 70's so she had a lot of makeup.  Lots and lots of light blue and green eye shadow!

One time a couple years ago, my mom and I had one of our last lucid conversations.  It was about how lenient and easy she was as a mom.  She had her mean times, but she never bothered me about wearing makeup or what kind of music I listened to.  She loved KC and the Sunshine Band and Andy Gibb and Sweet just as much as I did! She even took me to my first concert - The Bay City Rollers.  The first time she questioned my choice in music is when I was late in my college years and we were going to see Motley Crue, she was worried someone would shoot us.  Within just a month or so of that conversation, she had a major stroke which brought on her Dementia way worse than before and we never really had a good conversation again.  She passed away last October and though it has been 5 months this coming Sunday it is so fresh and raw.  I lost my best friend.