Friday, April 16, 2010

Dressing Gowns and a Touch of Heartache

So now I'm on this nostalgia fetish in which everything having to do with vintage vanity is attracting me. Perhaps it's because I have one of those birthdays coming up that divide evenly by 5 (or 10). To combat the feeling of getting older, I'm getting younger in my mind.

Old memories surface:




  • My mom, in a dressing gown, takes out her pin curls. The curls boing all akimbo. Young girl me wonders how she will tame them. She has a tiny little groove in her right front tooth from using it to continually open bobby pins.



  • My first floor length nightgown that wasn't flannel felt so glamourous. I was wearing it the night I found out that my boyfriend, who had just left for college four weeks earlier, had up and married some witchcraft-practicing tart he had just meant in one of his classes. A Mississippi River full of tears flowed while my sister held me.



  • Hot humid nights and the sound of crickets. Sitting on the floor with my sisters in front of a big box fan and staying up too late. Talking about boys.


Photo credit: Lulu of Lunatech Photographics


  • A box full of nightgowns as a 30th birthday present, from my ex-husband. He thought they might help me like him better and forget the black eye he gave me the night before.



Photo credit: Lulu of Lunatech Photographics


  • Didn't work. I left him anyway. Took the nightgowns with me.

Old memories, both sweet and sour, float around me like little balloons of celebration. Today I remembered a phone number from 28 years ago but forgot to eat lunch. Go figure.



5 comments:

Empress Jade Vintage said...

Thank you for featuring a couple of my gowns. I so enjoyed your trip down memory lane. Memories are love and sorrow combined. The nostalgic desire for what's gone and can never be again and the thankfulness that it's really over.

XOXO

Erin Wallace said...

I love a good gressing gown. What I don't like is waking up with my gown all twosted around my legs and feeling like I am in a cocoon. But that first gown is GORGEOUS! I think I would feel like Ann Margaret in it, and that wouldn't be half bad.

Sharon said...

Erin, I don't like the tangled-up-in-gown part either, but these feminine lovelies are so fun just to lounge around in!

Empress Jade, the items in your lovely store bring back memories, for sure. You are right, the memories are bittersweet!

Cindy said...

Gorgeous gowns! I must be a sleeping thrasher cause they would end up somewhere around my neck. Like you say, definitely best for lounging around in only.

Oh, and happy birthday Sharon!

Gigi said...

What dreamy gowns! And love the way you have those little snippets of memories interspersed -- great writing!
Blessings,
G