The Last of the Tights

Today, as my daughter talked about packing up her winter things, I realized that we had probably seen the last season of tights. If you’ve had a daughter (or been a daughter), you’ll know the ones I mean. They’re the same staple my mother wore, the same that I wore: those heavy, knit white tights of girlhood.

When she was small, they came with ruffles on the bum, peeking out under her sweet dresses when she finally learned to crawl (backwards at first) and beamed back at me in her first burst of independence. They were the kind she wore on stages singing Christmas music –sagging around her ankles and drooping at the knees– as she scanned the crowd under the bright lights, more concerned about finding us than about her performance. They were the tights she wore under her best dress when she went out on a date with her daddy; the same ones she wore the night we both dressed up and experienced our first ballet on stage. She whispered, in that childish whisper that seems louder than a real voice, about how grown up we were, and about how someday she’d be the ballerina on stage. They were the tights she wore (I realized too late) to chase her brothers through the yard and to shimmy up a tree. I protested at first, scrubbing out the mud stains and shaking my head at the tears, until I realized that clothes are meant to be worn and life is meant to be lived in them. They were the tights she wore as she sat with the cello–a quarter-size, but still as big as she was– to perform her music in the living room for her grandparents.

They were the tights of her childhood, of a hundred girlhoods before hers. They were the staple of a season that was lived fully–and now, they were being put to rest for the last time.

They’ll be replaced next season by sheer nylons, by clothing bought in the women’s section of the store. She’ll wear them with high heels and just a hint of makeup, and ask me to help her make sure her hair looks right. They’ll be worn for middle school performances and dances and first dates. They’ll be the new staples of her metamorphosis into her adult life.

It’s a little bittersweet to pack them up and put them aside. After all, they’ll always remind me of that sweet-smiling ringleted little girl who wore them. But, what a privilege to be here at the changing of the seasons. To be the one who buys the next staple, who teaches her to apply the makeup, who walks her hand in hand into womanhood. What a gift that she has lived to outgrow the old, and embrace the new.

Parenting is full of milestones, and some of them are unexpected. Some pass unnoticed, until we look back and realize with a start that that thing that had been a constant for so long sometime ceased to exist. But there is always new. There is always forward. There is always a new person being revealed before our very eyes.

It’s the last of the season of tights. But the end of one thing heralds the beginning of another. And I’m the lucky one to journey with her into it.