Growing up to wear parental clothes

“Mom! I am five feet six inches tall!” my daughter announced as she entered the kitchen.
She checks her height and weight frequently these past couple of years with the measuring stick in our medical scales. Recently, she was puzzled at a sudden weight gain until she measured her height. She was in the growth spurt in five feet, six inches. For the youngest and therefore perpetually shortest member of our family, this is a major event.
“Hey, four more inches and you will be as tall as me,” I said.
She wrinkled her nose, “How tall is Dad?”
“Just a couple inches taller than you.”
She had a hopeful look as she left for school that morning.
It was only three or four years ago that she topped her grandmother: In the Hershberger clan, children measure their entrance into the adult world by comparing their heights to their shrinking, under five-feet tall grandmother. Every grandchild was delighted when they towered over their oldest relative.
As our children have grown, we have seen eyeball to eyeball with fewer and fewer of them. All five of my husband’s sons have outsized him. But they flaunt it in my face when the tower over me.
My daughter may no want to look down on me, but she enjoyed looking me right in the eye the other day. Of course, she was wearing the currently fashionably thick-soled shoes and I was barefoot.
Thank goodness my feet are still longer than hers, or I would be barefoot more often. She likes to borrow anything of mine that fits her. She wishes I were as svelte as a teenager so I could wear any or all of my clothes.
As if she didn’t already help herself, Recently, I was admiring the blue shirt she was wearing to school that one morning when I realized, “That’s my shirt and she looks better in it than I do.”
That’s the difference between a daughter and a son. My daughter borrows rather freely from my wardrobe: Jewelry, shirts, socks, but no shoes, yet. After 20-plus years with stepsons and three sons, it is so unexpected.
With sons, I never had to even think about them borrowing my T-shirts. I might borrow one of theirs, but they would never touch mine.
Granted, they did make a weekly pilgrimage to their dad’s sock drawer every Sunday for black socks. On rare occasions they actually borrowed one of his ties. But it is not the same. They never even bothered to think about wearing his shirts, suits, shoes or jeans. Not even when they were close to the same size.
Having a teenage daughter caught me off guard at the closet door. Even with a warning she would be like this.
When she was three, I wore a full-length skirt with pictures along the hem. She stopped, stared at my skirt and asked, “Can I have that to wear when I grow up?”
I was surprised as I looked down at this child who was then shorter than my skirt. “Yes, if you still want it,” I promised. I gave the skirt away years ago, but she has more than made up for it, believe me.