For some reason, the thought came to me the other day - what ever happened to housecoats? Maybe because it was noon, everyone was off to work and I was still in my jamies. I was trying to remember the last time I actually saw someone in one. My mother-in-law was my first personal experience with one. I think it may have been in the "mid-life" time of never being able to get cool...or maybe it was just summer. I think that I adopted the idea sometime when the kids were little and I needed a little more than a nightie to sit around in...like I ever did much sitting! I think that was more like when I sat to feed a baby. But anyway, I haven't had or seen a housecoat in ages. So when my daughter Megan called me from her cell phone while shopping at Big Lots to tell me that they had a great deal on this nightie thing that snapped up the front (I don't remember if she knew what they were called) and asked if I thought that Grandma might like one, I perked right up and said, "What about me?" She paused, as though to think on whether it was something that I was seriously inquiring about, and I quickly let her know that I had just been reminiscing about them recently and was definitely interested. "Isn't that a little to Grandma-ish?", she inquired but I assured her that even though I don't have any grandchildren...yet...that I was certainly old enough. She has brought me home two!
So, here is my dilemma - am I too young for a housecoat? Should I avoid them like I would support hose, ladies suits, sensible shoes and long hair that needs to be put up in a bun? Or should I embrace them as part of the "getting older" experience? I have, after all, been looking forward to getting older...
Warning
by Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickles for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
I don't own much of anything purple but I'll keep my eye out for it in the future!
