Sort of Spring

In some ways this is the worst time of year.
Waiting for Summer.

I took my daughter shopping on Saturday. I had noticed that she was looking particularly bedraggled. It was probably not really her, as such. Everything looks that way to me at this time of year.
The soggy sad shivering end of a season that simply will not die.

But died is what most of her jeans have done, with splits in the knees and her skinny's suffering from winter weight gain. And  then there are those tired winter woolies that keep on having to be pulled out from the back of the cupboard because, oh dear, its chilly again.

I conned myself into Spring. For a day. For a shopping spree. The shops, in case you haven't noticed, are bursting with Springiness. They made me feel the same. For a short time.

I am a very bad shopper. My daughter, is worse. She was grumpy by the time she had sloped off to the changing rooms for the first time only, heavily laden. I was grumpy by the time she came out. I got grumpier as I was forced to stand in the narrow changing room passageway, as she tossed clothes at me from inside the cubicle. I was denied entry. Her body, which was created in my womb, has now become a High Priority Secret.

This is strange to me. I have always been quite free and easy about bodies, perfect or not, with their wobbly bits holding not that much fascination, one way or the other. Bodies are bodies. Maybe its the nurse in me, or maybe the artist, or maybe I have just forgotten what its like to be thirteen.

More than likely. I have forgotten a lot. Like what it feels like, to try on one garment after another in a tiny space, with a mirror that reduces ones bodily proportions to those of a vertically challenged circus person that people might pay to see..

For many years now I have used the same trolley for my clothes as I do for my mince and veg.
Mostly my wardrobe is made up of the type of garments that have labels in Small Medium or Large, or Extra Large, for that matter. Trying on is really not necessary. The rest of my collection has simply 'happened' via jumble sales and other people's delightful cast offs.

So, you understand, my daughter really hasn't had a shopping role model.
In other words, its really not her fault.
She hated it, but we emerged with a couple of items. I think the most joy both of us had was finding some really 'cool' stuff for her brother who, at 17, has less interest in shopping than he does in shower gel, and that is saying something.

I blame the time of 'Sort of Spring' that we are in.
I eye my sheepskin boots with something akin to nausea most mornings, sliding them on with a 'not again' sort of sigh. I cannot believe that at the end of last Autumn I felt excited about boots.

How I long for slip slops, sun hats and loose cotton tops.
Of cause my daughter cannot yet wear the clothes she begrudgingly bought. We are having a cold spell again, and those purple 'chubbies' are back out in full force.
Who can blame her?

Pass the blanket.