One Leg At A Time

I really hated wearing tights when I was little.

But when I think about it - the torturous garments for my legs were just one of many signs that I had a good mom. She'd force us in to those stretchy, confining things for special occasions - like mass on Christmas Eve or Thanksgiving Dinner. My sister and I would be dressed to the nines in our velvet dresses, Polly Flinders (complete with all the beautiful smocking) or wool kilts, our legs surviving the brutal Minnesota winters thanks to our tights.

They came in all different varieties - cottony white, fuzzy and ribbed red, navy and scratchy. I always hated them. I hated tights because they were itchy. I also hated them because their tight, elastic waist would pinch my tummy and otherwise drive me crazy. I hated the tights because I didn't really have any hips to hold them up, and sometimes they'd get all droopy around my legs by the end of church.

I am sure it had nothing to do with all my running around and climbing in the pews during mass.

My sister suffered through a worse fate with her tights.

She was still in diapers, and sometimes those tights would start sliding off her trunk like the casing on a link of sausage. She'd end up with the a look that to this day my parents affectionately call, "Droopy Drawers."

Fast forward, oh, 27 years or so.

I knew the mercury was going to take a nose dive, and so I had picked up some tights over the weekend. Black and herringbone, they were far more professional looking than the white, fuzzy red or knit navy leggings of my youth.

Not wanting to take my skirts out of my wardrobe rotation during winter, I decided to break the tights out Monday morning. I put them on, one leg after another, and instantly felt transported back to the days of my youth.

And for that, alone, I believe those tights were worth their weight in gold.

Fortunately the tights stayed up all day long - I have no idea whether they were affected by my curvy hips, or my power to control myself and not climb the chairs during an afternoon meeting.