Miko Maciaszek
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Last week, I was in my local coffee haunt when I vaguely registered a person brushing beside me to reach the next table.
I noticed her hand first on the table – old, with rings slack on thinned fingers, veined and soft. The faint scent of lily of the valley.
I looked up, committed now to taking her in. And there she was, a slightly bent, squishable old lady sitting at the table next to mine … wearing my mom's sweater!
Well, maybe it wasn't her exact sweater, but it was a close reproduction. It was pale blue with three flower pots on the front. One pot held daffodils, one tulips, the last hyacinth. Underneath was written the word Printemps. Just in case you were confused about the message. In French, of course, because every sweater with flower pots on it should have a little touch of the cosmopolitan.
Cleta had a million of them. Yes, my mom's name was Cleta. We called her Cleta, not Mom. But that's another bottle of wine. Let's just say she eschewed the title but not the role.
Anyway, back to the sweaters. It wasn't just sweaters, actually – there were blouses, sweatshirts, jewellery, all telling a story.
The winter fashion lineup was carefully chosen knits in a range of burgundies and purples. Canadian geese flying over marshes, "Lake Simcoe" written underneath (that's where the family cottage was). Or a winding path leading to a winter cabin, smoke curling out of a chimney.
My mom's sweaters were like a walking tribute to Norman Rockwell, appearing at a Tim Hortons near you.
Summer would bring forth an array of brightly coloured, striped, oversized blouses. Rows of cabanas, swimsuits hanging from clotheslines, palm trees swaying in the breeze. So Caribbean! Not that my mom had ever been to the Caribbean. Nor to Mexico, the Bahamas or Europe. She didn't need to – she already had the shirt.
She ran the gamut – from the Eiffel Tower to Egyptian pyramids to country general stores. Each told a story, or maybe a fantasy.
Perhaps she was saying that if she ever did go to Paris, it would be handy to have a map of the city on her shirt in case she got lost. And if she did get to the Eiffel Tower, she would definitely put a rhinestone on its tip. If she went to that general store on her sweatshirt, she'd sit on the rocking chair on the porch and come home with 12 different tiny jams, the tops of the jars wrapped in red gingham. If she were young again, she'd definitely wear one of those polka-dot bikinis emblazoned on the front of her blouse.
But Christmas, oh Christmas. That's when every rule of good taste was thrown out the window. No Currier & Ives scenes of snow gently falling on horse-drawn sleighs. She liked her Christmas clothes a little more avant garde.
Snowmen would be lined up across her chest. Or a Santa hat with a three-dimensional white pompom dangled jauntily over one breast. Or a Noel message covered in iridescent glitter.
These Santa of Hollywood creations would usually be accented with carefully chosen accessories – a brooch that played Jingle Bells, or drop earrings in the shape of Christmas lights that (need you ask) blinked on and off.
Some might find such ensembles over-the-top, and yet, standing in front of her fibre-optic Christmas tree, she could pull it off.
My mother hadn't always worn clothes that told stories. I have memories of Cleta in her 40s – tailored, sophisticated even. Black cocktail dresses. Decked out for my dad's company parties. It wasn't until her 70s and 80s that she began to wear stories on her clothes.
Perhaps she no longer needed to dress to impress. Maybe she just wanted her dress to send a message. And I think that message was, "Don't take your self too seriously."
One of her most hysterical ensembles was a nightshirt with a picture of a bed and a bedside table. Emblazoned underneath were the words, "One Night Stand."
I had to admit that for a woman of 85 years, that was definitely fashion-forward.
We, her children, were never shy about our reactions to her style. We ridiculed, cajoled, physically cringed when the story clothes were brought out.
Our criticism was never more harsh than when she offered to share her wardrobe with us.
"It's chilly tonight," she'd say. "Take one of my sweaters with you."
"No thanks," I'd reply. "I'd rather not wear The Legend of Sleepy Hollow scrawled on my back tonight."
She didn't care. It just egged her on to more lavish and absurd story clothes.
Others' criticisms meant nothing to her. She was old now, and the clothes made her happy.
And in the end they made us smile, too. I don't know what happened to all her story clothes when we broke up the house after she died, but I miss them sorely now.
Which is why I leaned over to that lady in the coffee shop last week and said, softly, "Cool sweater!"
Anne Murphy lives in Calgary.