Inseams

I am at the age where, like Joni Mitchell,
I've looked at jeans 
through both sides now.

I can still feel the ache in my cheeks 
from grinning so hard 
the first time I'd taken a pair 
of my mom's sewing shears 
to my acid-wash 1990s jeans.

Those ones that had one too many 
grass stains and blood smears 
and the gaping jawed, 
string-toothed knee holes. 

I'd butchered my first pair of cut-off jeans, 
under the guidance of my hovering mom.
"Careful of your hands.
"Cut away from your fingers," 
her voice had called out with a weariness
that I didn't know, really live, until now.

Each twisted cotton fiber 
of that first pair of cut-offs
stood as a hard-earned multimedia memory 
of growing up with wobbly long legs 
and with a spatial awareness 
that was, well, interactive.
Never quite knowing where my limbs were, 
my body and my jeans bore the evidence of
bumps and jabs from furniture corners, 
door knobs, walls and other impediments.

And yet, these were not Daisy Dukes. 
A phrase I didn't even understand, 
because I wasn't allowed 
to watch Dukes of Hazard. 
But I inferred this to mean, Scandalous. 
Unallowed. Verboten. 

As I grew, I became semi-detached 
and quasi-funded, 
ambling through the local mall with my bestie, 
hitting up Contempo Casuals 
for their "2 for $35!" short-short sales.
And this is where I began 
to catalogue the sighs of my parents.

I'd run from the parked car, 
engine still rumbling, up to my room, 
clutching soft plastic drawstring retail bags.
I'd emerge moments later wearing 
low-waisted, high-legged 
factory-made "cut-off" jean shorts.

I would rush down to the living room, 
do a twirl, the linear sticker on my hip 
with size number glinting 
under the shine from the table lamp. 

"Those are too short, Di. 
"Do you plan to go in public with those?"
"You look ridiculous," 
My dad coached from the couch.

"You have a 35" inseam leg, Di.
"You cannot wear something that short. 
"It is out of proportion," 
My seamstress mother intoned, 
throwing fashion law my way.

I'd rolled my eyes and stomped,
and rubber-band hmmphed my loose limbs up the stairs. 
But I got to keep them, 
and I wore the heck out of them.

And my legs kept growing
while the inseams got shorter.

Next  it was Soffe shorts 
for cheer practice,
waistband rolled thrice 
over the thick white elastic
hitched up a little, too,
for good measure.

Then it was the 
"I'm getting my body back!" 
moment after childbirth, 
where an otherwise reasonable-length 
pair of jean cut-offs from Nordstrom Rack
met my superfluous roll or two.
of the thigh-high cuff.

But now. 
Now I am the tired mom.

And I see my barely teen daughter
come drifting down the stairs, 
cheeks lodged high 
atop her zygomatic arches, 
her spirits as lifted.

I am the one looking across 
at the stair landing,
taking in the spry, calculating teen
who now stands over me.

And she beams 
her unusually happy face our way, 
toward her Dad and me,
blinding us with her joy, 
as she swivels in jeans 
that I can only describe 
as AI-ed to her body.

I am the one, 
vulnerable on the couch,
my face falling 
with poorly-hidden feelings.

I open my mouth, I close it.
I try to think of the right thing, 
the kind thing, 
the correct thing to say.

This is what comes out:
"If you are buying shorts,
then they need to come 
with a net positive inseam. 
"Those have a inverse inseam -
they have an absent inseam." 

Her rainbow face clouds over
like a surprise summer storm, 
darkness and angles set in.
MOMMMM she spits. 
I'M PAYING, 
IT DOESN'T MATTER 
WHAT YOU THINK.

I inhale knives, 
press my eyes closed.

"All I'm asking for is two inches or more, total." 
I say, in what I hope is a rational, 
calling-in kind of delivery.

"And the inseam on this pair, 
well it goes UP not down your leg."

Tornado warning 
goes to Watch status.
In her microexpressions, 
I see her weighing 
whether to lunge at me 
and go through life motherless.
After too long a moment of contemplation, 
her face smooths.

"It's OK. 
"Dad said I could keep one pair. 
"And this is the longer one, so." 

She smirks, turns on her heel, 
and jiggles her exposed derrière 
up the flight of oak
to separate herself 
from my forming rebuttal.

I fold my head
into my open palms,
massage my fraying, greying eyebrows.
MPH-MYYYY-GOD 
I exhale like a failed mantra.

As I breathe in deeply, 
I catch the whisps of her 
under-breath commentary 
from the second floor landing:
"Good thing you didn't see the receipt;
the jeans rang up as 'micro shorts!'" 

She cackles.
Her door slams.

I have seen both sides, now.
Inseam insurgence, 
it's jeanerational.