For some strange reason, my last post got me to thinking about JEANS.....my single most favorite item of clothing for the past 44 years!
The best pair of jeans I ever had was the pair I wore from around 1968 until almost 1980, when they literally fell apart! They were size 1 (believe it or not, until around 2000, I weighed 98 pounds!), hip huggers ("low rise" for anyone under 35), bell bottoms ("flaired" or "boot cut" for today's youngsters) and had an American flag enclosed within a circle with a white peace symbol embroidered on top of it on the left hip pocket. Recognize the symbolism there?
I painstakingly sewed that patch on myself at a time when I could neither sew or had ever paid over $20 for a pair of jeans. For years, girls, and a few guys, would ask me where I got the "cool" jeans, and I wore them to every rock concert I could save up the money to attend at Barton Coliseum in Little Rock. This was back in the days when you arrived about 6 hours early to take advantage of the "open seating" policy so you became friends with the 20 or so other people packed in around you. It was also back in the day when people got trampled to death trying to take advantage of that "opening seating". I think of those jeans and I also think of the Eagles, Three Dog Night, Bob Seger, The Little River Band, REO, Journey, The Marshall Tucker Band, Lynard Skynard......the list goes on and on. And those jeans were there for it all. There were jeans before, and jeans after, but those were the best jeans EVER!
My second favorite pair of jeans were bought in 90s in Mobile, Alabama. Levis that I got on sale for less than $25 .......and I still have them! They are a bigger size than #1 favorite jeans, so fortunately, I can still wear them. But because of the painful death of favorite jeans #1 (although loved much, they were also abused much too!), I have shown favorite jeans #2 more respect.
Favorite jeans #2 are an endearment to me for more grown-up reasons. I have many fun and happy memories associated with this pair of jeans, but more importantly, these are the jeans I wore most often when I spent the night with my mother in the hospital during her final eight months of life. I would return home in the mornings and immediately wash them so they would be available for my next shift. There was something very comforting about these familiar old jeans in the new unfamiliar, uncomfortable environment. It was this pair of jeans I wore as I walked the halls of the hospital in the wee hours of Christmas morning , 2007, unable to sleep because I knew with aching certainty that this would be my mother's last Christmas on earth.
As hard as I tried, I have not been able to keep favorite jeans #2 in tact. They are badly faded, and the fabric is so thin the knees are worn through in the identical same place on both legs. Oddly enough, I have seen many similarly styled jeans priced between $100-200 in stores. Apparently, it is very labor intensive to distress a new pair of jeans to the degree I did over the past 15 years!
I just checked my closet..........there are 27 pair of jeans in there; different styles, different sizes (my weight fluctuates), and different price ranges. I have dress-up jeans, jeans to wear with boots (love em), jeans to do work in, and jeans to wear around the house. I have expensive jeans and cheap jeans. Some jeans look pretty good on, and some make me look like a short, overweight 60 year old........which isn't a far stretch.
It occurred to me that perhaps our jeans might be a metaphor for our lives.
Looking for answers? Maybe you should check your closet.
