- when i was 12 or 13, it became a birthday tradition that my aunt would take me to my favorite vintage store, flower child, and let me pick out a gift. she was a cool aunt, and the only adult in my life at that time who never tried to invalidate my anger. she made me feel like it was okay to be mad at my mom for dying, mad at my dad for trying to move on. she grew up with a dead mom and a complicated family too, and so she understood.
- she would let me smoke her cigarettes and she never told on me for getting high. it was in her kitchen that i dyed my hair hot pink for the very first time, wearing a trash bag like a dress and impatiently skimming through the instructions on a box of cheap bleach while she laughed at me.
- she was lovably ditzy and scatterbrained which made spending time with her feel like an adventure since she was always getting lost or winding up in some kind of trouble. everything she did became a story. rummaging through racks and racks of polyester and crinoline, she would say things like, "i had a pair of thigh high go go boots just like that!"
- back then i desperately wanted a mother figure, someone to fill in that blank. my mom died before i was old enough to have the kinds of heavy and heartfelt conversations that teenagers are supposed to have with their parents, i imagine like wistful characters in john hughes movies. there were so many questions i never got to ask her, so many things about her that i'll never know. things that only she could have told me.
- as i got older it dawned on me that maybe my cool aunt wasn't so cool. she was deeply homophobic, a brimstone and fire born again christian. i was thrilled by stories she told about running away and dropping acid and hitchhiking cross-country as a teenager in the late 60's, but these were tempered with stories about repenting to jesus and saving queer people from the evils of their queerness. i haven't spoken to her in nearly a decade. losing that illusion of her, though, made me realize that i didn't need a mom, i already had one.
- twenty years later, flower child is still in business and i still make a point to visit around my birthday. some of my most treasured finds over the years: my first leopard print coat à la kinderwhore courtney love, a clear vinyl cat collar choker studded with rhinestones, a turquoise 1950's prom dress with a full, gauzy tulle skirt, an obnoxious mirrored light-up jesus wall hanging, a plastic tripod lamp with psychedelic rotating flames, thick plastic kurt cobain sunglasses, an armful of lucite bangle bracelets...
apr 25 2022 ∞
apr 26 2022 +
apr 26 2022 +