Pink and Green Memories

Above: As a child "summering" on Tybee Island, Georgia

Above: Another summer during my junior high days

There are many wonderful memories I have of wearing pink and green but a couple stand out in my mind as the best of them: one of my favorite childhood bikinis and the scooped-necked shirt set of my junior high days.

First a bit of background to this story. I was the only girl of my generation. It must have been fun then for my mother, aunts, great aunts and grandmothers to purchase my clothes as well as dress me up continually because this is evidenced in the copious amounts of fancy clothes and darling sundresses, shorts playsets and other attire there are pictures galore' of with me standing there smiling for the snapshots. I don't think my brothers and boy cousins cared one whit about my wardrobe but I've been an enjoyer-of-clothes since I can remember and another great memory from my childhood is of the time that I was taken to Savannah's Lad and Lassie children's shoppe' for finding that year's new Easter dress with my mother and my two grandmothers. I must have been about 7 or 8 because it was while we were still living in Georgia and I was used to going over to this upscale store for clothing purchases from time to time. "The dress" was eventually found along with my hat, short white gloves and coordinating purse but of course however, there was a happy glitch this particular trip- Grandmother Wylly and Grandmother Collins both liked a few other dresses as well for me and so we left the store with 6 total dresses in hand and my mother totally bemused. She would bring up that story from time to time because within my family's Scottish ancestry ethos on both sides, to spend that much in money and with the amount of items procured within one swipe, especially on a child, was quite atypical even for an only-granddaughter.

And so it was, for this same reason, that I seemed to have had a wide assortment of bathing suits as a child as well. When we lived in Georgia, every summer Mother and us-kids along with a cousin or two would spend the hot, humid months out on Tybee Island. We'd rent an old-style beach cottage and lazily enjoyed the summer days with my Dad coming in on the train to spend weekends with us and the grandparents, my uncle, aunt and others tagging along some weekends as well. I'm still a plain, one-piece bathing suit kinda' gal however, with being the only-girl, I was given my share of bikinis as well. Above is a photo of my green bikini which had a tiny pink flower print on it. I actually can accurately date this photo as my late mother's handwriting on the back of it says, "Lachlan 6 1/2 Tybee July 1974". This was just two summers before we did the huge move-up-north and back then, I just assumed that every summer for the rest of my life would be spent out on the beach and along the back river ways around ole' Tybee Island.

Fast forward to my junior high days spent northwards and another pink and green favorite memory surfaces. This time it's about 2 scoop-necked tennis tops: one was pink with green piping and the other was green with pink as shown in the photo above. They both came from one of my favorite boutiques situated along our town's Norman Rockwell-esque darling little main street called Silver Spring Drive. The place itself was called, Les Moise and this was where I got my Tretorn tennis shoes, tennis attire and my ski togs plus my very first pair of skis: blue and white K2s and boy, did I think I had-arrived! Every weekend in the winter was taken up with skiing lessons n' plenty of ski bumming around for my older brother James and I and so to have my very own pair of skis, boots, poles and a cute ski outfit to boost- yeah man! Remember that this was the early-1980's and if you're familiar with the ski movies from that time period, skiing was THE THING back then...way bigger than tennis, sailing and golf combined for the pre-teens and teens of my era. So anyway, Dad and I had dropped into this shop to get me a replacement pair of Tretorns and there they were....these two, too-cute pink and green tops! Oh, how I automatically fell in love with the both of them and excitedly asked my father if I could try one on. He ended up buying both tops plus the tennis shoes and I was in heaven- such a happy, happy day. I wore those tops with kacki shorts, a-line wrap skirts and here in this photo with those typical 80's sport shorts we lived-in back then. I wish I still had those tops just for sentimentality-sake however, I do pick up every now and then a scoopnecked cotton top or two for summer wear here on this island and they always bring back this warm memory of my time with Dad at Les Moise.

Pink and Green is a prettily preppy style classic both for the young as well as the older adult and is also...forever within some of my favorite memories.