Once upon a time, it was considered fashionable to wear an accessory called the leg warmer. Despite their toasty title, in the fashion world their purpose was purely aesthetic. Their crossover from the dance world into everyday life was hastened by classic eighties movies like Flashdance, Fame, and Footloose. In fact, I actually had no idea that their intended purpose was to prevent pulled muscles and chilly calves in drafty old dance studios. For those of you non-dancer types or those of you who weren't yet born when this trend was trendy, allow me to explain. Leg warmers were little tubes of knitted fabric that you pulled on over the lower leg of your pants, if in fact you were wearing pants. Pants were optional as the beauty of the leg warmer meant that it could also be worn with other essential pieces of eighties fashion such as the mini skirt, the aerobic leotard, or the spandex biker short. After pulling them onto your leg, it was essential that they be scrunched appropriately so that they fell somewhere between your knee and the midpoint of your calf. They were supposed to cover your heels but the toes of your shoes still peeked out. There was a whole art to putting them on and placing them just so. If the Interweb had existed, fashion hipsters would have created video tutorials on how to correctly scrunch your dancewear turned daily wardrobe staple.
Because my sister and I were ridiculously huge fans of the television series, The Kids from Fame, I couldn't wait to get my hands on some leg warmers of my very own. Unfortunately, at the time when leg warmers were an absolute must have, it looked as though we might end up among the have-nots. We found ourselves strolling around with warmer-less extremities, uncovered and exposed to the harshness of the elements. Because my parents had just built a ginormous new house and subsequently opened their own business, the family budget for leg warmers had been all but eliminated that year. Fortunately, skeins of yarn were cheap back then. Given my mom's crafty abilities, in a few short hours, she could whip up almost anything, including a cute little pair of leg warmers, or so we thought.
My mom is a pretty talented lady in the craft world. She has had a lot of different successes. She is known throughout the entire east coast for designing and knitting the most adorable baby sweaters that you have ever laid eyes on. When I was a little girl, I had plenty of these sweaters and I loved wearing them. I was not alone. My mom made a pretty little pink version for one of my younger cousins. For three straight years, she wore the sweater like it was her uniform and insisted on always having the hood up, rain or shine. It was constantly fastened under her chin with a little bow of two crocheted strings that had tiny pink pom-poms at each end. If you flip through our family photo albums, you would be hard pressed to find her cute little face when it isnt fuzzily framed in a halo of pink yarn. I completely understand her fashion preference. I myself had a rainbow sweater vest that was pretty adorable, but my favorite piece of outerwear was a little blue and white striped poncho that I practically lived in. I would still wear it today if it wasn't so tiny. Besides knitted and crocheted items, my mom was also a gifted seamstress. She used to take Tweety Bird printed beach towels and fashion them into little after-swim robes for me. I would wear them until they became too small or had turned into tattered, shredded rags, whichever came first. Then she would hunt down more cartoon character beach towels and make me a brand new swim cover-up. She didn't stop when we were little either, as she even made prom dresses for both my sister and me.
Speaking of my sister, another one of my mom's signature specialties was designing and sewing us "adorable" matching holiday outfits. Occasionally, this affected the entire family. Although it is difficult for me to resist, I am going to refrain from discussing the year that my mom made all five of us Little House on the Prairie themed Easter outfits. I'm not entirely sure if my dad is completely over that one yet, but the matchy-matchy stuff was usually reserved especially for my sister and me. I'm not sure why, but my maternal grandmother loved when my mother dressed us alike. I would have rather worn a paper bag than an identical matching outfit as my sister, but I had little say in the matter. I am positive the feeling was mutual. While I hated every second of it, it brought incredible joy to my grandmother. She was always very good to her grandchildren, and in exchange, I was willing to roll my eyes and take one for the team if it meant making her happy. So...off I'd go to Christmas dinner in a smaller version of the same ensemble my sister was wearing. Sometimes my mom would personalize them a bit so that we each had slightly different accessories, but the material and overall style was always identical.
These former holiday outfits always caused problems when we would try to rewear them again at a later date. For whatever reason, once in a while, my sister and I would have some kind of weird fashion mind meld and inadvertently happen to select the exact same outfit. The unwritten rule was that whoever was dressed first had wardrobe priority. My sister was always an early bird and I preferred to sleep late, as in waking up exactly two minutes before the bus came. I could brush my teeth, run a rake through my hair, throw some clothes on my body, grab my book bag and still be on time for the bus. That is if you consider running down the driveway at top speed, clutching a piece of buttered cinnamon toast to your chest, and shouting, "Wait for me!" to be a timely kind of departure. The whole process went haywire on any morning when I became aware that my sister and I had accidentally dressed as twinsies. I always seemed to find this out mere seconds before the bus arrived. A brief glimpse of her in the hallway would send me careening towards my closet, scrambling around my room, attempting to accomplish a hasty wardrobe change at the speed of light. Luckily for us, the bus actually passed by our house twice. While it was highly frowned upon, we could in fact catch the bus on the rebound in emergency situations, especially those caused by a last minute fashion crisis. When this happened, our bus driver would always gently remind us of bus riding rule # 2, "You catch the bus. The bus does not catch you." Bus riding rule # 1 was "Riding the bus is a privilege and not a right. That privilege can be taken away."
Bus riding rules and sisterly fashion faux pas aside, I often smile when I think of one of my very favorite holiday dresses. It was made of red and white gingham and it had a sheer, ruffled, apron-like topper over it that was tied in the back with a big, beautiful, gossamer bow. It had flouncy little crinolines underneath the skirt and it was probably a tad too fancy for school. I loved it so very much that my mom always let me wear it anyway. Of course, my sister also had a nearly identical version of this dress. One of the good things about having matching clothes with your siblings is that your favorites often got a new life in the form of hand me downs. I imagine the original dress was created for the winter holidays as my mom had sewn a teeny tiny jingle bell into the hemline of the skirt. Everywhere I walked, a little jingle followed me. I thought it was the best dress on earth. My sister's dress did not have a bell as she was too old for that sort of silliness, but when I inherited her old frock, I demanded that my mom add the required jingle bell. I often laugh at this whole thing as I clearly remember my exasperated teachers hopelessly trying to identify the unseen source of this incessant bell ringing. As a former teacher, I'm sure that my instructors were less than pleased with the special addition to my little dress, but I absolutely adored it!
At this point, I would like to take a moment to have an honest little chat about the glories and the pitfalls of handmade clothing. Wearing clothes that my mom had lovingly made for us always garnered a considerable amount of attention. Teachers and adults would always rave and fuss at length over how beautiful they were and how lucky we were to have such a ridiculously talented mom. All true. Other kids were often jealous especially when our clothes had extra cool specialized features. After all, no other little girl in the whole elementary school could boast a jingle bell hem as she gleefully skipped around the halls. Another hot item among the grade school set, were the silver spaceman snow pants that my mom had fashioned for my brother in the height of the space craze. Their durability was unparalleled and I was thrilled to inherit them many years later. Despite the fact that by that time astronauts were old hat, they still created a tremendous buzz wherever I wore them. Whether I was sitting on the school bus enjoying a toasty ride, cross country skiing during gym class, or sled riding during recess, my sparkly snow gear kept me snuggly warm and hot on the trail of the fashion darlings. Unfortunately, it wasn't always peaches and cream.
At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful brat, I'm going to share a dirty little inside secret. Well it certainly isn't a secret in our household, but outsiders, even some of our own family members, may be unaware of the internal struggles that my mother endured with her offspring over the years. They were almost exclusively related to wardrobe choices and these nonsensical conflicts rapidly accelerated during the tween years. Suddenly everything in the universe becomes a matter of life and death, especially the choice of clothing that you place on your bratty little body each morning. It wasn't that we didn't love the clothing that our mom had made for us, but at this age, sometimes we didn't appreciate all of our beautiful homemade things as much as we should have.
Sometimes we just wanted to be dressed in crappy clothes from K-mart like all the other kids. Sometimes we didn't want every teacher in the school fawning over our wardrobe for hours on end. Even if we were equally fond of whatever handmade item we were wearing that day, we just wanted the annoying teacher to zip it, leave us and our super special sweater alone, and quit calling attention to us in front of the entire class...for the ten millionth time that year. Yes, my mother made this. Yes, it's lovely. Yes, I am tremendously lucky. No, at this time she is not taking orders for next Christmas. No, I myself am not particularly crafty. No, she would not be willing to volunteer to make all of the costumes for the upcoming school play. Now can we please just get back to fractions? And I swear if you use the crocheted stripes in my outfit as a tool to demonstrate any kind of mathematic function, I'm marching straight to the principal's office and demanding to go home. Keep it up and I'll ask my mom to sew a little irritating bell into the hemline of every piece of clothing in my closet!!
You can see how being the child of a super talented, crafty mother was truly a double-edged sword, which brings me back to the leg warmers. It was a rare occasion when something my mother had fashioned for us with her own two hands was not equal or superior to something you could acquire in a store. Unfortunately, the one area where this was not true was when it came to the leg warmer. She had created two sets of this fashion staple for both my sister and me. Mine were baby blue and hot pink. I think my sister's were hot pink and mint green. The color choices were just perfect and we were completely ecstatic over them...that is until we pulled them onto our lower legs. Technically, they qualified as a leg warmer, but unfortunately, in practice, they were a fashion fail. The first problem was that they were simply too tight. A crucial feature of the leg warmer is its ability to be carefully scrunched and slouched. The yarn my mom had used to make ours was stiffer and bulkier than the kind used to make the storebought variety. This made ours completely and totally unscrunchable. The second problem? They were too short. They went from our calf to our ankle and stopped. My mom specifically designed them to fit this way in order to prevent them from dragging on the ground and getting covered in filth. While this particular pattern modification was both hygienic and practical, it completely ruined the whole look.
To add insult to injury, someone had given my sister a "real" pair of leg warmers as a gift. So while she sauntered around in her perfectly slouchy storebought ones, I was left to sport the wonky ones my mom had designed. I wore them anyway, after all, weird leg warmers were better than no leg warmers at all. Fortunately, this former fashion staple turned into a faded, outdated fad rather quickly. Although I can't say that I was sad to retire my not quite right leg warmers, I continued to hold onto them for a very, very long time. Despite the fact that they were way past their fashion expiration date and the fact that they fit funny, my mom had made them especially for me. To this day, they are the only thing that I ever remember her making that didn't turn out magnificently. In fact, if I still had them today, I might consider putting them on anyway. Even if leg warmers never find a spot in the fashion limelight again. Even if they would now be three sizes too small. Even if they were fluorescent pink. Even if people looked at me weird especially since it is currently 100 degrees outside and I don't normally frequent dance studios. I would wear them anyway, because my mom made them especially for me with lots of love. And finally after all these years, I get it. My mom made us all kinds of beautiful clothes. People admired her for her abilities and envied her children for their good fortune to have such a talented mom. Even if we stood out among all the other kids. Even during those awkward adolescent years when we would have rather just blended in. Looking back, I wouldn't change a single outfit, not even those wacky, weirdo, wannabe leg warmers.
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