Delightfully out of step

We have a guest author with us today.  Woosi is my daughter, my middle kiddle who mixed her hand-me-down clothing with wild abandon.  I remember a favorite of hers - a gold turtleneck T shirt and a polyester skirt  of many gores in orange.  I made the skirt just for her and she loved it.  She loved that combination best.

Here's Woosi

Delightfully out of step

When I was little, I loved bright colors, and loud patterns. I have pictures of myself as a child dressed in clothes that make my eyes hurt.  At some point, probably in junior high, someone must have said something that made me embarrassed about the way I dressed. By high school, I was very shy and all my clothes were white and dark blue.

But secretly I've always liked to dress like I did when I was three. Three-year-olds get the best clothes! Sparkly purple pants, orange tie-dye shirts and rubber boots that look like ducks…I’m jealous! They just don’t make clothes like that for adults. Anyways, at some point, I decided to dress in a way that makes me happy again.  Besides, wearing wild clothes does a wonderful job of embarrassing your children, which I think is the duty of every parent. I’ve followed this duty studiously with my daughter, though she now treats these incidents by blithely assuring me that the person being embarrassed is assuredly not her.

So, we were making a loop, picking up a dry suit [for snorkeling or diving] in Mount Vernon, and a painting in Port Townsend, and made a quick vacation out of it. It was spring and I was going on a quick vacation… so I invaded my dress-like-a-3-year-old stash of clothes (that is, most of my clothes). I think it all goes together pretty well . 

So, dressing, breakfast and errands accomplished, we were leaving town, and I see a thrift store displaying a magenta jacket with an orange tunic and bright orange scarf. Obviously, we had to stop. As I was drooling over all of the other cool things in the store, my partner LightFoot called out “Woosi Hat!”  That man knows me well!

I grabbed the hat, put it on, and knew instantly I had to have it. LightFoot, seeing the whole picture, realized this hat was just the crowning glory to the rest of my happy 3-year-old outfit, and called for a picture.  

Now, my daughter had posted this article on Facebook about how silly normal women look when they pose like supermodels, so I naturally had to try my best supermodel pose, flapper style, to match the hat!  So, here is my tribute to high fashion psychedelic 3-year-old flapper models.

On Saturday night we stayed at the Captain Whidbey Inn, whose tagline is “Delightfully out of step.”  Yup, that’s me! 

Woosi Wildwood