memories in context

In the car the other day with my daughter K, I began a conversation about clothing and fashion which led to a discussion about how we used to dress when we were QF. While I regret our former excessive views about modesty, I have few particular regrets about our former attire - silly and legalistic though the skirt-wearing compulsion may have been. When they were little, I dressed the girls in Osh Kosh pinnies mostly. They were cute, practical and thrifty - they simply never wore out. I remember with real fondness my gorgeous daughters wearing them. What a cute little bunch they were. 

But that's not how my daughter K remembers it at all. From the moment the topic arose it was clear she has some pretty strong emotions attached to those memories. When I said that she and her sisters had looked super-cute in their frocks she bristled and retorted that 'freakish' was a better descriptor. I reminded her that those dresses were not unusual for the time, that pretty well everyone was wearing them, that they were not homemade or scrounged in 2nd hand stores but were purchased new from expensive stores that stocked US designer labels. K disagreed saying, 'I think you're kidding yourself there, Mum.' 

Interesting.

I ran the story past a close friend who knew me in my skirt-wearing years but was not in the Fundy Frock-wearing Club herself. My friend agreed: Everyone was wearing that stuff in the 90s and early 00s; it was quality, expensive and fashionable attire and waaay cute. Watching TV with the kids the other night I noticed that all the girls in the movie Matilda (1996) were wearing the same kind of stuff. I pointed out the fact but was met with a similar and strongly negative response.

So, I figure there's an important lesson in this. Each of us will remember those days differently and some of us will have memories that provoke really powerful emotional responses. While for me the clothing memories are that I selected sensible attire for my girls with perhaps an over-emphasis on femininity (and certainly an over-emphasis on modesty). To K those Osh Kosh pinnies represent something much broader and more insidious. 

For my beautiful daughter, those dresses provoke memories of the religious and authoritarian structure of our family and her parents' refusal to acknowledge her right to make simple choices according to her own tastes. My insistence that my darling girl dress to please her father and me made K feel that we wanted her to be something that she knew in her heart she never would be, and that we'd never fully accept and value her if she wasn't. K's pinnies were to her a symbol of fundamentalist views about the frighteningly limited future available to women - marriage, babies, and more babies - which K tells me seemed like a life of slavery.

So there's an interesting lesson learned: Memories of the same events can differ because of the context in which they occurred. When I exercised my choice in buying Osh Kosh for my girls to wear, it was liberating for me. When K felt forced to wear those same garments, it was an oppression to her. That my intention was not to abuse my power seemingly has no bearing on K's feelings about it. The memory hurts her just the same. Even all these years later.

I've mentioned here before that I believe it's easier for us mothers to come out of controlling lifestyles like QF than it is for our kids to do the same. We women often have something our children lack: a frame of reference we gained in the relative normalcy of our lives before patriarchal fundamentalism. As mums we need to allow that our children will have memories that are different from ours, memories that hurt. And they may want to blame us for them. 

I am glad that my children are finding their voices. I understand that they are going to grow up and want to talk about their lives inside QF fundamentalism. I know that they are going to want sometimes to criticise me. There will be occasions I'll agree the criticism is warranted, and others that I won't. However, I am committed to validating my children's feelings such as they are. Even when my memories differ from theirs, I realise need to acknowledge that all the feelings that remain are absolutely real.

Further, I feel I need to come to terms with the likelihood that some of my kids are, like me, going to find their catharisis in public blogging. No doubt it isn't going to be easy to bear that that process may leave people with misunderstandings about me, give others ammunition to use against me and inevitably reveal a few of my many, many mistakes. I think the sooner I get used to the idea the better. So here's me beginning that process.