When My Daughter Was a Space Princess

My daughter has always had a better sense of style than I do, even when she was three years old. That’s when I took her to a local children’s clothing store and she discovered navy blue Italian knits. Money was scarce. I sewed most of our clothes, even some of my husband’s. It was the early 1970s and knits were all the rage, especially plaids. The rage was wrong. I have a picture of my first husband wearing a pair of truly awful plaid knit pants I made at his request. No man should ever leave the house in plaid stretch knit trousers unless he’s going to a costume party or Las Vegas. However, I dutifully did my duty and he happily wore them. When it came to my daughter’s clothes, I sewed frilly little things for her that were cute in the 1940s. That’s when my fashion sense was cemented by my mother, who had no taste in clothing either. It was not her fault. Her father had sewn her flapper dresses out of dyed flour sacks, so what did she know? Taking my three-year old daughter into an upscale store for little people who would grow up to attend Cotillion classes was a mistake. Nothing was within our price range, yet everything there was enchanting and I wanted to buy all of it for her. I fell into a pool of self-pity when I saw the price of a fluffy dress with an appliquéd hippopotamus. My daughter went straight for the designer rack, where she recognized her people in the shape of an elegant Italian suit. We both left feeling defeated. After listening to my tale of woe, one of the aunts, much to my embarrassment, marched up to the store in question and soon delivered the hippopotamus to a three-year old who was learning to make the best of things. This act of kindness will never be forgotten. That’s because we have a photo of my little girl standing proudly in her happy hippo dress. (You should not think this was the only gift of clothing. All the aunts, adopted and otherwise, showered her with adorable dresses. It’s just that no one showed up with navy blue knits designed and stitched in Paris or Rome.) My daughter’s avant guard fashion sense led her to become a Mod before anyone in her school understood what Mod meant. All they knew was she wore used clothing, so they pushed her down the stairs. But she got her revenge two years later when fashion caught up and the same mean girls came to her asking for advice about where to find ‘60s attire. Her hairstyles were also ahead of her time, though not always on purpose. I knew she liked the Mod look so one day I lopped off her long hair and gave her an asymmetrical Twiggy cut. This turned out to be a truly tragic mistake that utterly ruined her life forever. I felt quite guilty about it until a few years later when she created her own version of the same thing. Then there was year she decided to venture into the world of home-made. Her first project was a hand-stitched, red plaid, long gathered skirt which she topped with an overly large, tucked in, men’s white undershirt. She proudly appeared at the kitchen door as I was packing lunches, and asked, “How do I look?” I stood rooted to the floor, frozen in space and time, my mind bouncing between wanting to protect her from worse mockery and a desire to praise her efforts. I finally blurted out, “What a pretty skirt! You did a great job!” Her Uncle was not as diplomatic. When he saw her later, he snickered and dubbed her “Joe Shit the Ragman.” That was her nickname for the next twenty years. Oddly enough, she thought it was endearing. Yet before she created her own fashion formula, my daughter did have the opportunity to become a variety of princesses due to her mother’s sewing machine. When she awoke on the morning of an elementary school Halloween parade, she beheld a sequin-spangled blue princes gown her Fairy Godmother had placed right next to her bed, where the sun could shine upon her Cinderella moment. While she was wowing the audience with her Royal Ballet choreography during a second grade talent show, she daintily tripped across the stage in a Heidi-worthy number complete with puffed sleeves and pinafore. Several years later, I took her to a science fiction gathering at CalState Long Beach. She was dressed as Nova from the 1979 Japanese TV series “Star Blazers, Battleship Yamamoto.” Everybody loved her and she was happy. The fact that this event morphed into Comic Con which she still attends each year makes me feel righteous, even though we later had a fight over what she could wear to her first Junior High School dance. I opted for pastels; she arrived in a black knit sheath. You win some; you lose some. She had another noteworthy Cinderella moment as a teenager. A year or two prior to her senior year she was critically injured in a car accident. There was a question as to her ever walking unaided again. She more or less mended, continued to be the champion for popularity misfits, and was elected Homecoming Queen by a majority of the minorities. This time we went to an outlet store for her Homecoming Queen dress. Instead of the black strapless gowns worn by the entire Queen’s Court, or whatever you call the other girls nominated for the title, she picked out a beautifully modest, full-skirted long gown of Cinderella blue. She was a Disney Princess come to life on a football field. Our extended family filled up at least two bleacher rows. When the spotlight shone upon her, escorted by her tuxedo-clad father, walking down a red carpet rolled out onto the 50-yard line, the entire contingent of relatives burst into loud and unrestrained tears of joy. Among our midst was a new neighbor of one of the aunts, a sweet Korean woman with broken English. The aunt looked over and noticed her sobbing her heart out.“Why are you crying?” the aunt asked. The neighbor replied, “You all cry so I cry too. Why we cry?” “Because my niece can walk again.” Then they both burst into another fit of grateful tears. As time passed, we switched roles. My daughter became my fashion maven, telling me what to try on and what to avoid at all costs, in a futile attempt to keep her mother from looking like an old grandma from Krakow. I have no idea how many times she’s had to bite her cheek in an effort to keep from laughing and instead say to me, “You look so pretty in that…that…you look so pretty.” Despite her best efforts, my tastes have moved to Indian/Hippy mashups for going out and baggy jeans for staying in. Sometimes, if I’m going to a Victorian dance, I trot out in a hoop skirt. I still sew. You can understand my surprise and glee when she recently said she would be happy if I would someday make her a dress with ruffles. Yes, ruffles. Rows and rows of them, from shoulder to floor, on a flashy dress for her Flamenco dance performances. You see, when she’s not the envy of all with her minimalist attire, she also likes to trot out looking like a 1940s Carmen Amaya, in a costume with a big skirt, just like her Momma.