FOUNDATION GARMENTS

It's COOL inside? Oh, really?

Girdle

by Connie Wanek

In our teens we all bought girdles
with rubber knobs to hold up our stockings.
We wiggled into them, our “foundations.”

So many things look absurd from a distance
that people still take seriously,
like whether there’s a Heaven for pets.

What ever happened to my girdle?
One day I peeled it off for the last time
and all hell broke loose.

This is the poem today on The Writer’s Almanac, and it gave me my chuckle for the morning. Before anything else, I had to google Connie Wanek. She’s ten years younger than I, but she’s “been there” and she just knows stuff. I’m not a fan of free verse, but her work appeals to me. I like this gal.

Girdles, oh, yes, we had to wear them, whether we needed them or not. And gradually I did need one. I vividly and acutely remember the girdles the poet describes. You might not believe this, but up to just a year ago I had two of what we called “two-way stretch” pull-on garments, without the rubber knobs, among my souvenirs. In the last decades we took to wearing panty hose, and recently, many women go without stockings at all. Just last year, along with a few full and half-slips I’d not worn in years, my unworn girdles finally went into the donations bag. Such garments, and even stronger ones, are still worn today, so I have no doubt some gal could use them. Me? I now live in comfort and clothing a size bigger. 

That last stanza of hers had me not too fondly remembering a time when I did peel off my girdle. It was on a warm September day, forty-some-odd years ago, and it was my wedding day. I had to get out of that girdle and I did, and then came the picture taking. Only later, in those days of film cameras when the pictures took time to be developed, did I realize that my stomach stood out as though I was a bit in the family way. I wasn’t!

All these years I've had a love/hate relationship with my favorite wedding picture. It's me and Frank and his children, along with my tummy, all lined up out on the lawn. Oh! I just had an idea: I am going to open that picture I scanned it in years ago - and crop off our bottom halves. I can do that in this day of digital photography.

Now that's better - but now I think I could have worn
 a better bra! I do wish I'd left on the jacket with the dress.
Geeeeze Loueeeeeze!

Voila!