Wear this please

I ripped through the layers of brown paper wrapping my unexpected package last week to find a car shaped tin filled with candy laying on a quilt top of denim blue cotton alternating with blue and red patches. Unfolded the quilt top became a skirt. A couple of enclosed notes and a phone call revealed that our southern grandchildren had been shopping with their mother. The grandson saw the candy filled car and declared, “Grandpa would really like that.”
Then the kindergarten age granddaughter saw the quilt skirt and declared “Grandma would really like that.”
The skirt looked like the right size, had two deep, hidden pockets and lots of length for lounging modestly. As I chatted on the phone about the gifts, I pulled the skirt over my head, buttoned it at the waist and declared it a perfect fit. The next day I matched it up with a blue top and wore it to town. I figure that the next time I go visit, I will take it along and ask the if the granddaughter wants me to wear it shopping or to church. Whichever she chooses, will dictate when I wear it.
The skirt reminded me of a birthday gift I received several years ago. My husband and sons picked out material which I was to make into new clothes for myself. The second oldest really liked a shocking pink material accented with drawings of sweet little girls in pinafores with brown hair. I made it into a pinafore jumper and wore it with a brown blouse. The kids thought it was marvelous.
I wore it to church … once. I met the pastor in the church parking lot. He put on his sun glasses and started to make a funny comment, until I mentioned that my children had chosen the material. He abruptly stopped talking. I covered up my smile at his discomfiture. He lacked the insight of the grandmother who saw the button necklace I acquired shortly after I first met my soon to be instant family of sons. At the time the oldest was intrigued with his grandmother’s jar of buttons. He threaded them haphazardly onto a string and created a button necklace for me.
I slipped it over my head and wore it – around the house and to work at the cheerleader uniform factory where I stitched together skirts. The motherly woman who sewed across from me, looked at the necklace and understood immediately, “one of the boys made it for you?” she smiled as she looked at the necklace.
Too bad I no longer have the necklace. It would have made a perfect accessory for my quilt skirt. I should have taken a picture to remember it by, just as I should have made a picture of the winter accessories a granddaughter from the north sent me a couple years ago. At least that way she would have seen what I looked like wearing her gift.
Pictures are the reason for my next, “just cause I love you” outfit. My son was talking with his fiancé in Indonesia last week. She needed to know my size in American clothes, and then verified my shoulder measurements. My son measured me and passed along the information. The next day it struck me as an odd sort of question.
So I asked him, “are they renting or buying clothes for me to wear for their family celebration of your wedding their daughter?”
“Rentin. It’s so you look alike in the pictures.”
Okay. I can do that – it is sort of like being in a play – and afterwards I will pull out my quilt-top skirt and red blouse and finish out the day in total comfort.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)