Back to School

 It was awful.

September approached and suddenly my mother’s maternal duties clicked into overdrive.

I needed a new wardrobe for school. Now I didn’t really care that much, but for my mother it was extremely important.

There was a sort of ritual connected to it. First, we would pack into the car and march into Bradner’s in Olean. (Think of it as the Macy’s of a small southwestern New York state city.)

We would troll through the aisles. On her prodding, I would point out what I liked. Note: I didn’t really care that much about clothes. And two, I knew that I could never afford that blue blazer and plaid skirt outfit in Bradner’s so it really didn’t matter anyhow.

Armed with what she thought was a good idea of current fashion and my preferences, we would slip out of Bradners and go south on Main Street to the fabric store.

Step two. Our next visitation was the pattern books. McCall’s, Simplicity and Buttericks, although as I recall, McCall’s and Simplicity were what my mother thought to be much easier lines of patterns (and I suspect cheaper).

We would page through the pattern books, my mother spying things she thought just the ticket. I would be asked for my opinion.

Now I have to tell you, I hated these trips. I, for one, could not envision whatever it was that was in the pattern book with some as yet unselected fabric on my body. But my mother could. And she expected me to comments on her ideas. Meaning, she expected me to say yes and act grateful.

Sigh.

The patterns chosen, we’d then go to the fabrics. So with the patterns, remembrance of things Bradner’s, and then actual materials. And somehow, my mother would magically know how much of which fabric it would take to cover my body  in a particular dress or jumper or suit or whatever.

And then we’d be bagged and back in the car and on the way home.

She became a whirling dervish, cutting out the material, pattern pieces pinned to the fabric and laid out on table or floor.

She’d piece together the item, stitching it on her old Singer. Then the torture began. She would have to try it on me, seeing what needed to be adjusted for a good fit. And once she had the basic item on me, then she would pin on the sleeves. And there I would stand, often up on a stool, while she pinned and prodded. While I  ached to be anywhere but there.

Taking off the pinned up item, I would often either be scratched by the pins, or have to unpin things from my underwear to get out of it.

Arghh! I just wanted to get back to the book I was reading. But she was back at her sewing machine, and I would hide away until she called. Until I had to try it on again.

I certainly did not appreciate the hours she put in creating my wardrobe for the year. I did not pay attention to the late hours she spent. The zippers put in. The button holes, The hems.

But September came and I had the new dresses, jumpers, skirts.

And the first day of school came, and I had to choose among these new outfits to wear the first day. Problem was that it was still essentially summer. And the clothes she made were for fall and winter.

But I had to have a new outfit! So I would don the wool or corduroy whatever and sweat through the day. Aching for day two. When I could wear something more suited to the temperature.

I don’t know what it is like now. Do kids have new outfits for the first day of school. And you? Did you have a new outfit for that first day?