Empathy for Hip-Huggers Not Always Reciprocated

Don’t bother me about “hot pants”. I’m still trying to understand hip-huggers.

Actually, it’s simple. Hip-huggers are nothing more than slacks designed by a guy with no sense of humor for a girl with hips like an 11-year-old boy.

Hot pants are designed by the same guy who has now developed a sense of humor.

I happen to have enormous empathy for hip-huggers. They do not reciprocate. This probably has something to do with the fact that even when I was 11 I did not have hips like an 11-year-old boy.

It is possible to get a smashingly beautiful pair of hip-huggers to fit. However the waistline then gaps alarmingly like an ebullient kangaroo with a incipient case of heartburn.

A manufacturer of hip-huggers used to like to advertise that it was impossible not to have a good time while wearing ladies’ pants of his design.

I’ve always wanted to answer.

No, actually, just last Friday while bailing six inches of water out of the bathroom I felt like Frieda the Frump in pants of your design.

I had a perfectly ghastly time at a cocktail party in hip-huggers of your design because I couldn’t sit down and didn’t dare try a French pastry.

As a matter of fact I was wearing a pair of hip-huggers you designed last week when the garage mechanic called me some very unflattering names and charged me $10 to tune the motor of my car, which he also called some very unflattering names.

I happened to feel exactly like Greta the Gruesome as I was seen chasing our only two remaining trash cans up the street on a windy morning, wearing the same hip-huggers.

You name it, baby, and I’ve had the experiences rated “U” for “unhappy”-- wearing pants of your design. Cassandra at the dentist, Miranda at the movies Saturday with 37 Brownies, Minnie Mouse at the hairdresser’s with nothing but a bent safety pin and one earring in her wallet. Sophie the Sorrowful at the kindergarten party, the only mother in the room who hadn’t remembered to bake cupcakes.

One teen-age daughter now “ages” her hip-huggers properly by sitting in the bathtub while wearing them and then hanging them up to drip-dry all over the bathroom tile.

Of course they shrink, sometimes they really shrink! Then she sews braid around the hems to lengthen them and plays an extra set of tennis that day to take off a pound.

The other teen-age daughter has what is known as “illusion” hips. One her, hip-huggers float magically over the hip bone as though propelled by some magic. On top of this, her favorites attire is sloppy sweatshirts or sloppy undershirts, preferably too big or too small, paint-stained, and timeworn.

At South Beach on Martha's Vineyard, 1971

Yesterday the Baron and I went to the ice-cream store for milk and eggs. (Well, some people go to Monaco, and some to Miami; everyone has to do their own thing.)

Two beautiful people were emerging from their EKG ( ot was it MKG), I always get mixed up about those things!). One had short curly golden hair and a turtleneck sweater. The other had a shaggy golden mop and was wearing lavender corduroy bell-bottoms.

“Which one is the girl?” I whispered.

“Are you kidding!” answered the Baron, whose eyes never left the hip-huggers for a moment. Then I knew, for the first time, what a girl really looks like with the hips of an 11-year-old boy.

And let me tell you something. I’ve been so depressed ever since!

So I just trotted back home and pulled on my favorite pair of jeans and sat down in a full bathtub of warm water to read the new issue of Life.

There was a picture of Sophia Loren in a midi. I began to feel a little better.

There was a picture of Samantha Effar in hot pants. I had an immediate relapse.

I crawled dripping out of the tub and went to sit dripping on the back porch. I began to think about how nice it would been to live in Elizabethan England and then I remembered no one ever drove small foreign cars while wearing hoopskirts.

Why don’t they go completely candid and call it “Women’s Fears Daily” instead of “Women’s Wear Daily”?

--July 4, 1971

Willie the Happy Wanderer Returns Home to Save Family from Themselves

Willie the happy wanderer arrived during the holidays.

Like the unexpected spring breeze during a particularly brutish February of the unexpected letter from one’s children, Willie always arrives in time to save us from ourselves.

He is the neighborhood Viking, the Columbus of our block, the adventurer who sits in the kitchen watching appreciatively while the applesauce boils merrily on the stove.

“That’s really interesting,” observes Willie, twirling his handlebar mustache.

“What’s interesting?”

“Making applesauce. I never saw it actually made before.”

I blush appreciatively. I admire his mustache. He blushes appreciatively.

Willie is “en route” so to speak. He has just returned from three opulent (in terms of visual appreciation, not monetary considerations) months in the Hawaiian Islands and will shortly for Denver.

Willie has a particularly soothing, slow way of talking, perhaps stemming back to his southern background. His motions are deliberate, his appreciation of life is maximal.

The first evening he helps our son wrap Christmas gifts, a job usually set aside as a chore. They giggle uproariously over their own wit in executing the gift cards. One particularly charming and beautiful friend receives a bottle of perfume from Woodrow Wilson. She is trying to figure out any implications, if there are any.

Later, in the early hours of morning, they assemble the Christmas toys to be left Willi’s two-year old brother by a benevolent Santa.

Another evening Willie discusses dulcimers and papayas. He has a friend in a commune who makes dulcimers, an instrument gaining appreciation among the younger generation. When Willie speaks of the dulcimer, one can picture the group around the fireplace, the sturdy hands gliding across the gentle instrument coaxing forth quiet melodies.. We listen spellbound.

“Tell me more about Hawaii,” coaxes our 15-year-old who views the world only through the National Geographic.

“The main thing about Hawaii is that the people aren’t uptight about things. They don’t make judgments, at least they don’t make judgments from a fixed point. Only the tourists are uptight.

"I can't conceive of Willie really needing to improve his spirit. Pretty good for a 19-year-old. Pretty darn good, Willie."

I pause by the refrigerator, unabashedly eavesdropping on the conversation in the other room. I know only that “uptight” is a word we use as commonly as salt in our conversation now. I no longer remember when there was no “uptightness” -- if not the kids’ teeth, there always is ecology to worry with!

Willie confesses so innocently to his lacks: The yacht he failed to take to Sweden, the big wave he never surfed, his beginner’s status on the ski slopes. It tends to make us all less defensive.

Willie worries about his parents, a luxury granted to those who travel great distances. He would like to take them with him on his wandering but they are bound to a house, a routine a set of conventions.

He speaks in calbrations of people. He doesn’t know how many miles he’s gone, counting the months as “wiper” in the engine room of a tanker in the pacific Northwest. But he can remember “Norman the sentimental traveler” from Oregon or the beautiful smiles in Hawaii or the music in Appalachia.

Willie fades in and out of the background of his environment with ease. Even the handlebar mustache is no longer faddish. With his sturdy Alpine hiking boots, his surplus Army coat, and his three excellent sleeping bags he is equipped for travel. He can be ready to leave for San Francisco or Milwaukee in a few hours. Tangiers may take a little planning.

The last night home Willie discovered Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” lying on a table in our son’s room. He was entranced and we promised to mail him a copy in Colorada, when he finally has an address. That night the boys bartered. A guitar for a sleeping bag, each grinning delightedly with his new possession. Somehow it was nice to know a guitar that had been in the family for so long was going to be crossing the plains with Willie. Our 15-year-old coaxed him to stay just one more hour, to talk some more.

But Willie promised he would be back next time around. He had to get ready for Denver, for college this semester. He had to call Norman in Portland. And he thought he should fast for a few days, for the good of his spirit.

I can't conceive of Willie really needing to improve his spirit. Pretty good for a 19-year-old. Pretty darn good, Willie.

Autumn 'Sneaks Right In'--'Despite' Citronella Candle

“Do you know we are the only house in the neighborhood with a citronella candle still on the front porch?” I was asked Halloween week.

For so many months while we were still swimming and camping and bicycling, I kept thinking of the house as just a very nice place to stop by and do laundry.

Fall sneaked right in, however, wand the leaves tracked into the living room were almost as deep as the yard. It was time to “take stock.”

I prefer the eclectic approach.

First I went out and bought three gorgeous home decorating magazines boasting the newest in home entertaining ideas. Inspiration and motivation. (But shrimp creole for 40?)

Second, I took two aspirin and a good hard look at the interior of the house. In that order.

Third, I cashed in all my coupons on new cleaning miracle detergents. (Believe me, a miracle I needed!)

At this point, the kids disappeared from my life, reappearing systematically at mealtimes.

During the summer the bird and dog had decided the house belonged to them, and we were merely tenants.

“Saturday Night” (a parakeet with the body of a bird and the mentality of a B-52) regularly flew into the hair of anyone approaching the dining room and sampled all the house plants. The dog rearranged all the contents of one deep closet to suit herself and in a gargantuan effort, dragged throw rugs from one roof to another.

The crack in the bedroom wall no longer looked “interesting.”

The tennis balls and the dust balls in the vestibule began a 30-day war.

The living room draperies began to scream, “Disadvantaged!”

I began to spend less time reading the new books in the library and more time in the supermarket reading labels on rug shampoos.

“Don’t put ashes in that ashtray!” I snapped.

“The coffee cups are dirty,” the Baron replied.

“Mom, the calendar still says August!” one of the kids shouted.

“Leave the calendar alone,” I snarled.

My personal decorating theory is called “Vague Theory.” It goes hand in hand in my early style of furnishings known as “Almost Rummage Sale.”

The “Vague Theory” means if you read it is acceptable to mix modern with traditional it is perfectly all right to keep roller skates in the fireplace.

“Vague Theory” proponents have been known to lose a coffee table on days when the magazine and paper supply is heavy.

Vague theorists may have the same dinner table centerpiece for years.

They have entire basements filled with empty oatmeal boxes and coffee cans they’re going to “fill up” someday.

They keep the hardboiled eggs with the uncooked eggs on the same shelf in the refrigerator.

They are the people to whom all the neighbors send stray cats and lost dogs. (If our marriage ever breaks up it will be over one more "confounded lost dog.")

We just muddle along, growing ivy in old sneakers, until one day some upstart of a kid mentions citronella candles on the front porch.

“I think there is a squirrel in the attic,”  frets the Baron.

“Really? What is his name?” I ask.

The Baron left in a huff. I decided David Ruben could sell more books if he called them something like “Any Woman Can Learn to Live with a Husband.” I decided Ralph Nader ought to investigate directions on boxtops. I decided to write Bess Myerson and ask her if it’s true she never eats hamburgers.

I wandered around the backyard. There on a tall stem was one tiny rosebud bending in the wind, too dumb to fall off and too stubborn to freeze. I renamed the bush the “Vague Rose."
Then I lighted the citronella candle and huddled on the front porch. But it was too cold. Besides there was no place to sit down. Some dope had put away the porch furniture.

--November 14, 1972

Mom Feels 'Out of Touch' with Two Active Daughters

Now that our eldest is off to college, the house is no longer populated by gangling young men from the rock group or the lacrosse team. Instead, our daughter, the interior decorator, and our daughter, the disc jockey, have taken the spotlight.

I am starting to feel out of touch. I noticed it just yesterday in one of those avant garde shops where the lamps look like street lights and the peace sign is embroidered on everything except the candles.

A young man with handle-bar mustache and amber-colored glasses was explaining an aluminum and burlap wall hanging to my daughter, the decorator, while he straightened the creases in his orange and hot pink striped, bell bottom slacks.

I felt as though I should go off in a corner and try on orthopedic shoes or have my teeth looked at.

“Yes, I see exactly what you mean,” she gushed. “The empathy of the metal does it all.”

Back home, the other daughter was copying notes in her notebook as she listened to a disc jockey announce number 20 of the top 80 in a voice covered with peanut butter and jam.

I had a feeling it was going to be one of those weekends where the disc jockeys play all the top 1600 hits from the last three years, and she runs about sighing, “Oh, oh, it’s my favorite!” The titles all begin or sound like “I’d Like to Love You More,” “I Want to Love You So,” or “I Can’t Love You Anymore.” Done, of course by groups like the Purple Jug or the Broken Axle.

The first week their brother left for college the girls subdivided the house. They very graciously decided Mom and Dad should keep their bedroom, since no one would ever begin to get Mom’s desk cleared out anyway. However they decided brother would no longer need such a big bedroom and they pack up his rock (rock rocks!) collection, his overdue library books, and older sister moved in, His aquarium stayed,even though there are only two fish left and they can’t stand one another, but, somehow he feels that as long as the aquarium is still there he can still come back to the room someday.

Down came the Beatles and up went Romeo and Juliet.

The chemistry set got packed in a closet while big sister very thoughtfully went through borther’s outgrown shirts and found some that fit her.

Dolly, the decorator, charmed Dad in to sanding the floor and painting her entire room white. While Dad lost his religion over the sanding operation, she methodically cleaned sister’s things out of the closet. This included every handbag ever owned by the child beginning with the Guatemalan donkey feed bag, numbering at least thirty, all in pretty bad shape. (When your old things are turned down by Goodwill and Salvation Army, you know you’ve kept them too long!)

Dixie, the disc jockey discovered an all-night soul station. I developed the habit of sleeping with cotton in my ears.

The hallway became very cluttered. In the process of subdivision., boxes of things got placed throughout it. Let Mom throw it out, because I haven’t the courage! The three-dimensional puzzles, the outgrown sneakers, the bedroom slippers looking like droned pink rabbits, and the old class pictures with the cracked fold right down the middle.

The dog began to get confused about where she should take a nap while someone was in the bathroom. She started sleeping on the stairsteps and falling down the steps as soon as she fell asleep.

“You’ve got to do something about that dog. I don’t have time! I have another fabric shop to go to tonight,” I said, doing the cake walk to number 56 out of the top 94 called “Love me a Little More.”

Dolly, the decorator now beguiled her father into putting up a Japanese paper shade on 15 feet of brass chain, the paper shade came in red, yellow, and pink squares and cast an opium-like glow over the yellow furniture and the leopard skin bedspread.

“Where has my little pink and white checked gingham girl gone to?” I sobbed.

“Mother, you’re hilarious,” said Dixie, the disc jockey, as she made her way through the boxes in the hallway carrying her transistor and a gallon of bubble bath into the bathroom. There were just starting number 60 called “You Always Were a Lousy Lover/”

The dog fell asleep and tumbled down the steps one more time. I began to think almost wistfully of those long fall afternoons when their brother comes home with his knapsack full of dirty shirts and the empty cookie jar. At least, I still know how to starch a shirt and roll out  a mean chocolate chip cookie.

“What do you think of a black light poster depicting the arrival of the Rolling Stones in Vienna during 1963?” I was asked.

“It has a certain empathy,” I replied thoughtfully.