Two Worlds

I wondered what my son and his girlfriend thought of me when they came over yesterday. I was a study in the here-and-now vs. the sixties (when I was too young to have known much of what was going on in the world). There I sat, in my hot pink capri jeans and my Saul Goodman shirt I bought in Albuquerque, crocheting a rasta-colored afghan and listening to the Woodstock album. Of course, in my family, no one usually even blinks at the unusual juxtaposition of things. We are, as one friend kindly put it, Bohemian, and as such tend to be a little different from the norm in our dress, music choices, and decorating styles, among other things. (By the way, Womannequin was standing over me as I crocheted, wearing a Meat Woman t-shirt with her AC/DC boxers carelessly tossed over her shoulder. And for some reason, she also has an orange monkey hanging from her neck.)

Sometimes it cracks me up that people don't react to us more than they do. My middle son and I are probably the most outrageous in our fashion (although I was admittedly moreso when I was in better shape), but my youngest son makes interesting choices too. For the longest time, he looked as if he had stepped out of a noir movie from the forties. I may have mentioned this before, but one time a guy I'd been going out with for quite some time had taken me out to lunch. When we came back to my house, my youngest son was in the kitchen wearing a button-down shirt, nice trousers, suspenders, and a fedora. My friend didn't seem to notice, or if he did, he didn't say anything. He hadn't been around my kids a whole lot, but I guess it was still enough to understand them. My oldest son prefers to tone it down; he can't stand anything to fit tight, while his brothers -- especially the middle one -- think clothing should be a second skin.

I love that my kids are openminded about all things art, including apparel. I'm also glad that they extend that courtesy to me. There are times when I think I'm out of touch with the times, but when my twenty-six-year-old gets so excited that I found a pair of flared Levi's from the seventies (still in the package with tags), I feel better. Oh, and he flipped the album over when the side I was playing was over.