Summer Dresses, Graduation Dresses

Young combo at Culturefix

Today is Make Music New York, lots of free music all over the city (indoors and out) in celebration of the summer's advent.  I strolled into Culturefix and saw this jazzy Joni Mitchellesque combo.  And then I went back later and saw a duo:  a gal playing violin and a dude playing electric guitar together.  They did an experimental version of Waylon Jennings.  I'm going to go back again in a minute.

I was excited about this all day despite the fact NYC is under the pall of a heat wave, which is why I'm enjoying everyone's summer dresses.  This morning, I saw this woman in a pink dress with ruffles.  The ruffles were almost too hot for the day.

Tomorrow, is my second kid's elementary school graduation, and she will put on a new dress that has been hanging on a hanger on a mic stand in the living area for the past couple of weeks.

All this talk of graduation and dresses makes me think of my own 8th grade graduation and graduation dress.  I was a tiny 8th grader, the second tiniest kid in the school (only one boy from Mexico was tinier).  I was as big as a fifth grader, and couldn't find a thing to wear in my low-desert town.  Nothing I tried on at the one small fit me.  My dad ended up driving me to the old part of town where I found a Mexican peasant dress in heavy cotton in an import store that was actually kind of groovy, except that my peers did not understand my dress, which was long and beige with Mayan-inspired embroidery in shades of blue making a pyramid on the skirt.   I was already very shy and awkward with a bad ersatz Dorothy Hamill haircut and a handful of friends (my fellow Mormon girls, who weren't particularly nice), and so showing up in this dress did me no favors. 

All of the other girls were in Gunne Sax, you see, or dresses inspired by the Gunne Sax company, Victorian inspired, romantic, off the shoulder or with sexy straps, eyelet and satin ribbon trim.  They were nascent, full bodied Steve Nicks' goddesses in these cool dresses on a hot, dusty graduation day.  Hour later, I stood alone at the graduation dance.  I stood and stood in my rustic southwestern frock, and I'm not sure I talked to one person.  :-(

That said, my 5th grader graduates tomorrow in a dress from Lord and Taylor (where, oddly, she insisted on going) and  I'll post tomorrow.  I'm glad my girls are having far less traumatic childhoods than I did, but in the process, have I deprived them of anything to write about?