I don’t remember being in Mum and Dad’s walk-in robe while Mum was alive. But I do remember snooping around up there while Dad was working in the garden.
Mum and Dad’s room was on the third floor of our house in South East Queensland — a room that sat like a small box on top of the green steel roof of the house.
To get there you had to walk up a steep flight of polished wooden stairs. The air got hotter and hotter the further you climbed. No air conditioning. Not even ceiling fans. Turn right at the top of the stairs and you came to my parent’s walk-in robe — shelves and hanging space lining the hallway to the bathroom. Dad’s clothes were at the far end, near the bathroom door. They didn’t take up much space. Mum’s clothes were everywhere else. She loved clothes. Loved dressing up.
I remember a white jumper with yellow wattle and green leaves around the collar. Painted on with puffy fabric paint so the flowers were shiny and raised. Blouses with big, 80s style prints, rows of heels — red, navy, pink and green together. And grey suede boots. Also with heels. From what I remember, and the photos I’ve seen, my mother was short. Being tiny and having a love for dressing up, my mother almost always wore heels.
A green felt brimmed hat. Another in red. A grey travelling makeup case which looked like leather but was probably fake. Handle at the top, clasp on the front, lined with shiny brown fabric and a mirror on the inside of the lid. A couple of fur coats. One long, dark grey with darker flecks. Another, off-white and more of a shawl. My mother didn’t wear the coats in hot and humid Queensland, but they’d travelled round the world with her. Not sure what animal the coats came from.
The longer coat is now hanging in my father’s walk-in robe down here in coastal Victoria. The coat is shedding hairs and its burgundy lining has little holes in it. No doubt the work of moths. I researched online what makes fur coats shed and found the culprit to be direct sunlight. So I shut the blinds on the window so the sun couldn’t come in and have hung up moth guards with a citrus fragrance. No moth balls. Tried those and the smell was as bad as I remembered. I’d wear the coat if only it wasn’t made of real fur. Fur is in, but real fur is not. And what if I spilt something on the coat or it got lost or even stolen… The coat will just have to stay where it is for now.
On one of the shelves of the wardrobe was Mum’s makeup and perfumes. After Mum died I often played with her lipstick and eyeshadow. Putting on make-up was fun and I liked all the pretty colours. Various shades of red for the lips, even a gold. And for the eyes, shimmering powders in every colour I could imagine. There were fake eyelashes in little plastic boxes, but I didn’t know how to put them on so I just looked at those.
One of the ladies who once looked after me and my brother, when Dad went overseas for work, did my makeup for me as a special treat. She lived two properties over and was a schoolteacher. She sponged tan coloured liquid onto my face, and then I could choose the colours for everything else. Come to think of it, that lady was only in her early or mid-twenties. But at the time, she seemed like a proper grown up to me.
My mother’s clothes must have been given away when Dad sold that house — when he and I moved down to Victoria to live with his partner on her farm. Now that I’m an adult, I wish we still had those clothes. In the photos I’ve seen of my mother she always looked so stylish. A lot of the clothes she wore are in fashion again. It would be nice to have a few more pieces of hers about. And, I’d be interested to know if they fit me. Interested to know just how similar we might be. And if her clothes did fit me, I’d be wearing them for sure.
