Beech Tree News Network

Our granddaughter, Sabria, packed on a few extra pounds this winter, so some of her fair weather clothes no longer fit the way they should.  She was particularly fond of a pink and white butterfly skirt her mom bought her last year, but when she tried it on, before church last Sunday, it was a bit too snug around her waist.  

She pulled the waistband down below her belly in order to have some breathing room, but the move resulted in the elastic pinching her belly pudge out and over the waistband of the skirt.  The matching blouse did little to cover the resulting bump below her waist, and her mom was adamant that Sabria was not leaving the house looking like that.  (In fairness to her mom, it wasn’t a very good look.) 

“You can wear the skirt,” her mom said, “but you have to wear the waistband around your waist.”

“But it hurts my stomach when it’s there,” Sabria said.

“Then you have to wear something else,” her mom replied, “We wear our skirts around the waist.  That’s what normal people do.”

Sabria started to cry then sob then wail, “I want to wear the skirt, I want to wear the skirt, I want to wear the skirt!”  We were now in full meltdown mode.

Watching this play out in my kitchen, I thought about how this might look to an outsider, someone who had never been a little girl with an emotional attachment to a skirt.  I remembered another little girl and another skirt and what it was like to be emotionally attached to it.

I’ve told you before that my family lived at Mt. Washington, Kentucky, from the time I was five until age eleven, and I’ve said before and will say again that it was those five years that got me through the following seven when we lived on Ashes Creek in Spencer County.

During the 1960s, the Mt. Washington school system was way ahead of the curve as far as school systems went.  They had all kinds of programs and events for elementary age children.  My stepmom was a stay-at-home mom when we lived in that area, so we got to take part in things that didn’t exist when we moved to Taylorsville.  

During basketball season, the high school cheerleaders held a clinic for all the elementary school girls.  For four weeks, we got to use our long recess to go to the gym and learn cheers.  Stuff like, “Stand up! Sit down! Fight! Fight! Fight!”  Nothing very complicated, but we thought it was wonderful.

The school sent a note home with us, telling our parents we needed to wear either blue skirts, if we were cheering for the JV team, or red skirts, if we were cheering for the varsity team.  My two younger sisters were cheering for the JV and I would cheer for the varsity. 

 Neither my sisters nor I had appropriately colored skirts, so my stepmom bought material and a pattern and made it happen.  I don’t know exactly how she made it happen because she didn’t sew, but she was like that.  Despite all of our differences—and they are many—I will have to give her credit for that character trait.  It was one she passed on to me.  I might not know how to do something, but I will find somebody who knows, and I will make things happen.  Evidently, she knew someone who could sew, because when the big night came for our cheerleading debut, my sisters and I had cheerleading skirts to beat all cheerleading skirts.

I will never forget mine.  If you laid it out on the bed, it was like a big red circle with a hole in the center.  The hole was the waistband, and it fastened around my waist with hook-and-eye closures.  When I twirled, the skirt became air borne, showing the white nylon panties mom had gotten us to wear under our skirts.  

The night of the big game came, and my parents loaded the three of us up in the car and delivered us to the gym.  During time outs, the high school cheerleaders would get all us elementary cheer leaders out on the floor and let us do our stuff.  We cheered and shouted and jumped and twirled, and I felt beautiful in my little red skirt.  I don’t remember ever wearing that skirt again after that night, but I will never forget it.

Sabria didn’t get to wear the butterfly skirt to church that Sunday.  She left our house still crying.    I took the skirt and hid it away for her.  I will save it, because I understand.  Sometimes, you become emotionally attached to something for no obvious reason.  You just want to wear the skirt.