Posted by:
former extrovert
(
)
Date: April 17, 2013 08:05AM
My cousin and I were having a conversation in my Aunt's bedroom, after she had died. My cousin, who had happily left Mormonism several years ago, asked, "Did your mother believe in the temple?" My mother was the daughter of a GA. I told my cousin the truth, that my TBM mother and father never went to the temple, and they didn't wear garments. I told my cousin that my mother took me into her bedroom to show me her temple garments, before I got married. It was awkward and hushed, like the time she instructed me about sanitary napkins and tampons.
In my mother's day, all the garments were one-piece, and women had two choices of styles: "open-crotch" (I won't go there right now) and "flare leg." Let me explain the "flare leg." There was a center seam and two, separate, extremely wide legs. A woman had to take care of her business through one of the legs! I was in horror of this, until my mother showed me her own garments. Now, as then, no one is allowed to make any alteration, changes, or addition to the sacred temple garment, for fear of punishment from GOD. My mother showed me how to take apart the center seam, and sew the flare legs together, so the garment was like a one-piece mini slip. Regular underpants could be worn under it, which was much more sanitary and modest. (My aunt used to cross her legs in such a fashion that one could see up the flare leg, and see absolutely all there was to see.)
Mother had bought tons of beautiful lace in Europe, and she never had told me what all that lace was for. All her garments had wide lace at the bottom, so they were like standard-length slips. She had also cut off the sleeves and sewn narrower lace around the sleeve holes and neckline. These looked like lovely, lacy lingerie. She said, "I couldn't let my husband see me in the garments, the way they were."
After hearing the story, my cousin said, "You've got to see this!" She opened her mother's chest of drawers, and took the garments out. They had the identical lace on them! We died laughing! My mother had made a whole drawer full of illegal garments for my aunt.