*this is a work of nonfiction as told to me by my mother based on actual events that she experienced personally
My father told my mother her skirts were too long when they were casually dating. So she shortened them. When they got serious, he said her skirts were too short and told her to lengthen them.
When my parents started dating in the 1960s, miniskirts were all the rage.
My mother didn’t own any miniskirts. So my father made a suggestion.
“You should shorten all your skirts,” he said. “They’re too long.”
My mother was eager to please him. She sat down with a stack of skirts and a pair of scissors.
One by one, she cut off the bottom third of all her skirts before taking a needle and thread and creating new, shorter hemlines. She worked all night and into the early morning hours. By the time the sun rose, she had suitably shortened all her hemlines to meet the style of the time.
My mother couldn’t wait to show off her new and improved outfits to my father, and she wore her shorter skirts on all their dates. To her delight, he loved them, and he showered her with compliments on how nice she looked.
Then, one day, he changed his mind.
“Your skirts are too short,” he told her. “I think you should lengthen them.”
“Lengthen them?” my mother asked in confusion. “What do you mean by lengthening them? I cut them; I can’t just lengthen them.”
Since she couldn’t afford to go out and buy new skirts, my mother continued to wear her hand-hemmed miniskirts. My father continued telling her they were too short.
Then one day, she went to her future mother-in-law’s house, and the woman yelled at her about the length of her skirts. The woman who would one day become my grandmother grabbed ahold of my mother’s skirts and tugged it down until it nearly fell off while screaming.
My mother felt horrified. She went home and lamented over the unfixable state of her shortened hems. Then she slowly replaced her skirts one at a time until she could discard the ones she’d ruined at my father’s urging.
So the moral of the story is this: My mother wore long skirts, but my father didn’t like them. So she wore short skirts, and he didn’t like those either.
He was always angry at her for something or other: “You’re too thin,” he would say; “you’re too fat.”
She was never just right.
Once my mother had restored her wardrobe to a more conservative collection, she appeased my father. Eventually, they married at a civil ceremony. She wore a navy blue suit with a skirt that reached mid-calf. It was just right.
I’ve seen the picture; she looked lovely. Unfortunately, I can’t share the photo because it’s gone missing since the last time we moved.
I don’t remember what my father was wearing in the picture. It doesn’t really matter. No one ever complained about his hemlines.
Despite my father’s penchant for changing his mind, especially with things like my mother’s hemlines, my parents have been married nearly sixty years with no end in sight. I’m sure they would remain married another sixty years if they could.