Hand-me-down

[Sandra Davies]

Make do and mend.  

And if it doesn’t need mending, hand down, intact.

Even when hideous, as this one was.

(Heavy-weight cotton, scratchy-starched armhole seams, patterned with intertwined chain-links of hideous pinks)

The photographs prove it - the first of my mother with an eighteenth-month-old me at the seaside.

Then, eight years later, me sat on a hay bale, wearing the same, ‘made-to-last’ and completely unaltered (and just as uncomfortable) dress.

[Stephen Torelli]

Nice black and whites with a classy look.

[Toby Tucker Hecht]

When I was a kid, I got most of my clothes from a cousin who was in love with the color orange.  I wasn't.  Also, because she had a bigger waist than I did, I was given a cinch belt (remember those?) to keep the skirt up.  Then one day in class, I was called up to the blackboard and the cinch belt separated from the skirt and my skirt fell down to my feet.  I was wearing a slip, but the whole incident was horribly embarrassing. 

[Sandra Davies]

Teresa - it took me a very long time to identify that the dresses were identical, and says so much about the time before teenagers became other than mini adults.  

[Teresa]

It's funny but for me this is so not about clothes handed down.  It's about genetic ties, family and female legacy.  It amazes me you have both of these pictures to show the connection.  What little you've written about your mother, it never read as a dress you wanted to wear.  You desired a much freer print and pattern.  I love this.  We don't get to choose our parents, but we sure choose what to do with our lives. 

[Mike Handley]

Reminds me of the hand-me-down bell-bottom (womens) jeans I got from my aunt. But I adored them. Alas, I had more of a woman's ass back in the day.

[Sandra Davies]

Thanks Bill, Kristine - it occurs to me that my mother was about 25 years old and 5'4" if I remember rightly when this shot of her was taken, me nine and a half in the second photo so yes, I was tall ...

[Kristine_ES]

LOOK at these pictures.  very cool.  except for the scratchy part.  you were tall then, too, look at you!

[Bill Floyd]

This is beautiful in its way.  Lived-in, perhaps.

[Sandra Davies]

@ Gita - it's the photo (very faded).   And I was an extremely timid, obedient child.   Most of the time.

[Gita]

Is it the photo or was your hair a good bit lighter back then?  Hand me downs are easier to take if they've softened with age, but yours sounds prickly and stiff. You must have been a more obedient child than I was. I would not have put up with some scratchy pink outfit.