My father never had to be asked twice to go shopping, especially for groceries. What he didn’t like was being hurried. Choosing the best rib eye might require a solid 10 minutes.

“Marbling,” he’d murmur, scrutinizing the fat flecks of a steak with surgical interest as the butcher waited. 

Clothes shopping was no different. He often joined my mother, egging her on to try dress after dress, evaluating each frock. Was it too short?  Too frumpy? Did it overpower her small frame? Mama, an impulsive shopper, had little patience for long deliberations. 

She liked flash and bling as much as Dad liked fat-streaked T-bones. Whether a pork chop or a pant suit, he analyzed purchases with a strange dedication.

Dad earnestly believed he could save Mama from fashion crimes. He steered her towards classics, well-tailored and simple, long before the quiet luxury trend. But Mama leaned into flamboyant femininity — heels, furs and cocktail wear in the daytime. Liz Taylor and Joan Collins were lifestyle icons.

Mama wore a cocktail ring and negligee while rolling out biscuit dough at breakfast. Come evening, she never missed a Dallas or Dynasty episode. Afterward, she took long baths, emerging dewy-skinned in something diaphanous, trailing cologne de nuit.

She reminisced about starring in Fairview High School’s play, imagining a career on stage. If not for the traditional life she chose, including five children and an annoyingly opinionated husband, she might have lived the life of Liz.

At the very least, she planned to look the part.

Their shopping forays were certainly like watching Liz and Burton spar.

In answer to “What do you think Warren?” as she pivoted, he would artlessly offer his first reaction: “Shug, that dress is wearing you.” 

Mama would purse her lips, burnished red with Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow, and shoot him a withering look. 

Nonetheless, Dad wanted his opinions sought when it came to dressing what he considered “his” women. When I needed a prom dress, he volunteered to take me shopping. Inwardly, I dreaded the inevitable critique before we drew up outside the Belk store in Monroe.

He zeroed in on the most chaste dress in the junior department — a ballerina-pink dress prettily embroidered with rosebuds. I emerged from the dressing room looking like a cupcake. This was not what I was aiming for, but he practically cheered with approval. 

My father adored a dress that made me look like a Nutcracker extra.   

When I tried on a less modest number more like what my friends were wearing, he dropped a truth bomb. 

“Honey, you don’t have the bustline to pull that off,” he observed. My face flamed with heat. 

This was the kind of feedback Mama loathed.

Dad thrust the rosebud dress into the clerk’s hands, despite my fallen face. Come prom night, the virginal dress paired with my slumped posture read more Patty Duke than the sultry Daisy Duke I’d hoped for.

Cheerleaders and majorettes swanned past me in spaghetti straps and push-up bras as I spent the night loitering by the punch bowl with a completely tongue-tied date. My main activity was ruing my reflection during nervous restroom treks.

Mama would never have worn that dress. She’d have fought him on that. After all, she fought him all the way to divorce court.

Afterwards, she went full-tilt glam without Dad there to inhibit her impulses. Mama’s hairdo grew so high no one but her hairdresser could say where her scalp ended and hair began. She wore the highest heels even when her bunions screamed.

On a trip to Florida, she bought a door-knocker of a cocktail ring with a purported connection to the Super Bowl. The governor was off the accelerator and Mama swiftly blew through her divorce settlement. 

Nearly broke, she took a job at a new consignment shop.

Wealthy women with nearby lake homes consigned their finery there and Mama got first dibs. While she had seldom dressed better, she loathed wearing “second-hand” fashion, even while enjoying more wardrobe changes than Cher. 

None of that mattered.

When I praised a chic Chanel dupe she wore to a family dinner, she hissed at me, annoyed, “It isn’t real!”

As soon as she left that job, she resumed her preferred buying habit of new only.

I turned out to be quite the opposite, thrilled whenever I score a good knockoff, vintage find or a designer hand-me-down. 

Nonetheless, while Mama may not have inspired thrift, she modeled individuality, conformity be damned.

Recently, a young friend met me for a drink sporting turquoise-colored hair.  How could I not comment? I complimented her, privately thinking I have never been so free, nor so brave. She replied, “You can be ruled by all of the things that everyone else wants from you, or you can just have fun with your life.”

And just like that, I imagined Mama, radiating approval.