It was during our son’s five-year-old baseball game birthday party when I first really took note of it. I was in front of the house handing out admission tickets to all the party-goers so that our daughter, Emma, could be the ticket collector as the children arrived out back for the baseball game. I finished my job as the last of Cabell’s friends arrived and I rounded the corner of the house to help my husband direct the baseball game which was already in full swing.
Emma, then seven years old, was jumping up and down next to her cousin Rebecca cheering for the players. I stopped to take in the sight. Cousin Rebecca had soft blonde curls primly pulled back in a pony-tail secured by a ribbon. Her white shirt had a pink-rimmed collar which coordinated perfectly with her pink Oshkosh overalls. Her white Ked tennis shoes were dressed up by the lace-tinged white ankle socks that were folded over to perfection. Jumping feverishly next to her was Emma. I thought we had brushed her hair that morning, but it hung in damp strings across her eyes and frazzled out to a mat around her shoulders. She was wearing an oversized tee-shirt no doubt snitched from her dad’s closet. It hung low about her knees, but not quite low enough to cover the ragged hole in the knee of her long-john pajama bottoms that completed the ensemble. She was barefooted. I thought to myself, “Why can’t she wear perfect clothes like other children?”
I really think that her father is largely responsible for her unique fashion sense. We have a home video of two year-old Emma pattering about the house with her hair in three pigtails, two in the front and one in the middle back, compliments of her dad. She has been that way ever since wearing three pigtails when the rest of the world has two.
During her pre-school years she insisted on wearing a prissy, ruffled dress of some kind with stockings and black patent leather shoes to her pre-school every day. When she returned home at the end of a busy pre-school day she would ease into a pair of green slip-on plastic high heels and clomp about the house until bedtime. In first grade she moved from the “Everyday-is-Sunday” fashion to fairy clothes. When her friends showed up at birthday parties in shorts and tennis shoes Emma would arrive in a pink leotard with chiffon skirt bedecked with silver sequins accompanied by old ballet shoes and either a silver sequin crown or wand with multi-colored Mylar streamers.
Now at age eight her dress of choice is stretch pants worn beneath an over-size tee-shirt and preferably the same ones for at least three days in a row. On Sundays she will wear one of her nice linen dresses over a clean pair of stretch pants.
This summer I tried to coax her out of the stretch pants one Sunday. “It’s really hot today,” I said, “Don’t you think you would be cooler if you wore the dress without the stretch pants?” “I didn’t say I was hot,” she replied. “No, I’m sure I’m not hot.”
“Well, I think your dress might look a little better without the black stretch pants,” I said in a hopeful voice.
“I like it fine,” she said. I looked at her comfortable smile and knew it was true.
Last night as I rested for a moment in the rocker on our screened porch Emma came to sit in my lap. That night’s apparel was a white knit sun dress topped with a black Bonnie Raitt “Road Tested” tee-shirt that obscured all but the lowest ten inches of the skirt of the dress.
“What car will I get when I’m old enough to drive?’ Emma asked knowing the answer since it is our running tease.
“A tank,” I replied.
Emma giggled, “But the police will arrest me if I drive along in a tank at thirteen miles an hour.”
“I don’t care,” I replied. “You’ll be safe and that’s all that matters to me.”
She knitted her brow and moved the conversation on to her next concern. “You know,” she said, “I don’t plan to go to VMI like Grandpa either.”
“That’s fine, “I replied. “I don’t think you’d like a career in the military anyway.”
“No,” she said, “I want a peaceful life.”
I smiled and we rocked.
I am sure that I will love this stretch pants look as long as it lasts and must love whatever Emma-fashion comes next. She is peaceful and at peace with herself. It is also what I want most for her, a peaceful life.