10 Oct Dressed For Success?
Sarah Jameson faces the first major challenge of her son’s school year: coming up with a costume for ‘colonial’ day.
Our first child started school this year, and it has been the most wonderful experience. The first hurdle, however, presented itself on Tuesday in the form of a note to parents regarding the school’s Colonial Day—to be held on Thursday. “Games, crafts and shows, a BBQ lunch with damper and lamingtons,” the note read. So far, so good. Then came the crunch: “All students should come dressed in colonial-style clothes.”
In actual fact, Colonial Day had been on the school calendar for a while, and I had known it was coming up, but had simply chosen to ‘forget’ and ignore the impending day until I could ignore it no longer.
As a mother who works part-time and has two younger children at home, the idea of coming up with a costume in two days filled me with terror. I can’t honestly use the job and kids as an excuse, though. Dressing up has never been one of my strengths. It must be genetic – my childhood photo album contains a photo of me, aged five, dressed for the Easter Hat Parade with an ice-cream-bucket hat, dubiously decorated with cardboard shapes, and tied up with a long streamer of crepe paper. I look as though I am wearing a bucket and toilet paper. Given that I, too, was the first child, this would have been my mother’s very first venture into the genre of dress-up days, and as history repeated itself this week, the lack of inspiration and creativity was overwhelming.
I didn’t want to set the bar too high. After all, Colonial Day would roll around every year, and this was just the first and the first child. And he’s only five – he wouldn’t care what he wore. A farmer seemed a reasonable idea. They had farmers in colonial times, I think. I had some lovely corduroy trousers and a shirt that would do. But I needed to find a hat.
I walked around our shopping centre for hours, my other children whingeing in the double stroller. I battled the narrow aisles of the two-dollar shops, looking for a farmer’s hat. To no avail. Even the party shop couldn’t help. Finally, I found a specialty costume shop. A straw hat was purchased. The end was in sight.
We dressed up our son and took him off to school. Red-checked shirt, black pants, his white trainers, straw hat, yellow bandanna around his neck. He wanted to take his ‘giddy-up’ horse on a stick. He looked like a cowboy from the Wild West, so I was glad that the note didn’t specify Australian colonial.
Arriving at the school, my fears abated as the playground swarmed with prettily dressed convict girls, several convict boys, a few soldiers, and many, many cowboy farmers.
Secretly, though, I have made a mental note to get out of the sewing machine and learn to use it. I will break the genetic cycle on dress-up days. My children will be convicts. Balls and chains will be crafted from polystyrene. Soldiers will have tall hats, fine jackets and boots. I will do better.
But what’s the rush? Maybe I’ll get creative in time for next year.
Illustration by Connah Brecon
