Disepiphany of the 29th-30th
Dec. 31st, 2025 10:14 pmExcavated a bunch of old "special" clothes of mine (my favorite ball dress, a silk blouse, a dress I wore the first time I went to Europe, a vest I mostly wore to Rocky Horror, a velvet skirt that was my grandmother's from the 50s (real velvet, heavy, rich, there is nothing like this in the modern world)) from where they were stashed and handed them off to J to try on. It was fun to see her in everything (she did a little fashion show, like she had done with the previous batch of more recent stuff), although also poignant. (While it is entirely reasonable that J, a few months from 17, fits into stuff I wore in college or my early 20s, while I, a couple years from 50, do not, I do sometimes miss being young and strong and thin and able to dance and occasionally dressing up in fun sparkly clothes and trying to look good, now that I'm old and limping and do not do that. That's mostly fine - the carousel of time mostly helped me escape from the not-great parts of my 20s into a much happier life, so, net positive there, and also it's hard to imagine my present self into the kind of femme presentation that younger self was still playing with - but, still, one does sometimes still feel the banal angst of middle age, what can you do.)