2024/9 BELL BOTTOMS & PROM DRESSES

My grandson Parker sent a text a few days ago.

“Hey Gum, do you happen to have one of these?”

He included a photo of a brown suede men’s jacket with fringe on the arms and hem. Straight out of the 1970’s. Lucky for him he has four grandparents who actually lived in the 1970’s. He is also conscious of the fact that one of those grandparents may have kept her wardrobe from that era. Sadly, if I had a jacket like that, I either can’t find it or I begrudgingly gave it away. (Someone someday is going to need this, is my general mantra).

That’s how I got my date with Parker. It was just a few weeks after my date with Anna.

Park and his cousin Anna are both high school seniors. I join the rest of our privileged society in lamenting the fact that they have so quickly morphed into capable pseudo-adults from tiny toddlers with blankies and binkies. They snuggled so comfortably against my chest not that long ago. My heart, feeling somewhat abandoned, yearns for being needed. I think it’s a path of most grandparents.

So, when Anna said she wanted to sleep over a few weeks ago, and maybe we could go look for Sweethearts Dance dresses, I jumped on it.  Anna claims certain places around here: the couch in our bedroom for sleeping, the chair beside mine for dinner, my recliner if I’m not in it. It’s been this way her whole life, but I sense recently that she is anxious about having to grow up and leave home. I remember feeling the same way; the push and pull of wanting to be independent but also wanting to curl up in a soft blanket with Mom. 

My shopping date with Anna ended with her coming home with a Sundance Outlet shopping bag. She found the almost perfect dress. “I can easily bring in the sides,” I told her as I pinched the seams around her tiny waist while we stood before the dressing room mirror. It turned out that her mom had already bought a Sweethearts dress. The one we found, lacy and flowy and a perfect blend of innocent and elegant, would become her Prom dress.

Yesterday Parker and I spent a glorious afternoon at the Layton 5 Hour Store. It’s really called NPS, but decades ago, when my friend Carol first introduced me to the original store in Salt Lake City, I came home and told my mom I had found the perfect store. “It’s a five-hour store. It takes five hours to go through and see everything they have to offer.” My whole family knows it as the 5 Hour Store. Once my Aunt Becky even wrote a check out to 5 HOUR STORE when she was checking out. They looked at her like she was crazy.

Anyway, Park and I gave a visit to the Layton store and found three pair of pants, a corduroy shirt, and some groovy upholstery fabric to sew into the jeans and make them bell bottoms. He was trying to deck himself out for the Hippie Dance at Farmington High. He was massively pleased with himself for finding a suede leather jacket on Poshmark for $45.

My job was to alter Anna’s dress and Parker’s trousers.

Last night, as I sat at my trusty little sewing machine brought out to the kitchen table, I relived waiting in the check-out line with Park. We stood side by side in silence for a minute. I’ve find it to be a good indicator of a safe relationship when two people can share space comfortably and not have to say anything. Parker doesn’t even shift his stance or turn his head. He just breaks the silence with: 

“I love you, Gum.” 

I pressed my foot into the pedal of my sewing machine and felt my old Grandmother heart pump with the throbbing of the needle into his Levi’s becoming retro hippie bell bottoms. My love for these two kids becomes cinched with each tiny stitch. Two separate pieces of fabric becoming one.

Every once in a while, I imagine my grandkids being grandparents. They’ll be lucky to live that long, I know. I pray they do. I imagine them seeing relationships from this perspective. I see them loving little ones who are currently only dreaming of having bodies. Their lives will be altered, shaped and bound like these garments at my kitchen table. Changed for good by the flesh of their flesh. 

Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to live long enough to watch the little ones around me become relatively independent humans. And thank you for keeping us close enough to stand in a check out line, side by side, and comfortably say, out of the blue: 
“I love you.”

I love you too, buddy.

Parker at Sweethearts Dance with Ayla.

Anna at Sweethearts Dance with Lucas.