I so appreciate dining that can be social and elegant in a fine setting where people look like they want to be there.
I am one of those who abhor the degradation in eating attire, where now, you can go nearly anywhere with flip-flops and a t-shirt.
I miss being able to take my wife out to someplace nice, and having to meet a standard of appearance. You look out of place if you appear wearing a suit or her a cocktail dress. v I actually miss that. Shaving. Putting on a small spot of cologne, something I do now maybe once every two or three years. Looking over to see my wife next to me, looking in the mirror, her neck extended with earrings dangling down as she sprayed her characteristically sensational perfume on her neck.
It is a ritual from my parents that I got to experience, I know. I can remember my parents who went out all the time when we were kids, him being career Navy stationed overseas during the Vietnam War) so that today just smelling even the slightest fragrance of her perfume (Shalimar) would flood my mind with the sight, sound, and smell of the ritual.
They spent a lot of time at the Officer's Club, and...when they went, they rarely if ever went casual. But it was those times when you could tell it was some fancy thing like a going away party, a promotion, or their own anniversary.
My dad would come out, replete in cuff links, dressing in his civilian suit with the same degree of meticulousness that he displayed in his military dress. Everything spotless. Holy Cross Class Ring on. Starched shirt. Tie tight, straight, and correctly pinned. Plumb line seamless from the knot of the tie through the buttons of the shirt down the center of the belt buckle to its terminus at the bottom of the zipper.
His angular face was shaven clean as the military teaches, and his flat-top crewcut, perfectly tapered down the sides and back of his head and his hair would be sticking straight up and raked slightly forward at the front, just above his blue eyes, held in that angle by some kind of special wax.
And I have some of that wax. Every single time I pop it open just to smell it (because I no longer possess either crewcut or hair!) it makes me think of my dad. Every morning he used it, but on those special occasions it defined him by that smell. God. I so hero-worshiped my dad. He had flaws, but those weren't important to me. Been gone 26 years now and I still wish I could hear his masculine, baritone no-nonsense voice again.
And my mom. She was a beautiful woman with a flair for elegance. Italian and Armenian, she got the best attributes of both, from both a character and appearance in general. Dark hair. Dark eyes. A face that had one dominant characteristic: It did not have an ounce of subtlety or dissemblance to it. Looking at her face was like looking into a window for me. There was never once in my whole life I can recall, where looking at her face didn't reliably inform me of what was going on in her mind. I saw it all, or at least it seemed so to me as a kid. As an adult, there was no question about it.
And when my parents were going out, my dad shone with ship-shape order, but my mother-she glittered and sparkled!
She always looked perfectly made up. Not all women have this skill. But my mother did. Everything on her was in harmony, tasteful, and subtle, with one exception: her lipstick. And she carried that exception well. She would use the absolute minimum of makeup on her face, but enough to accentuate her slightly olive skin. She did accentuate her dark Italian eyes, but she did it without the distracting effect. And she did use the fake eyelashes too, which as a kid, fascinated me.
Her lipstick she absolutely nailed. With the dark eyes hair, and complexion, she used very vividly colored shades of lipstick in the red range to great effect, and I know she turned heads. Her hair was done up in that moderate (not full) beehive look. But she did sometimes wear her hair down, too.
She wore pearls, they did look sensational on them. I so regret that pearls are somewhat stodgy and out of fashion to some. And she had a nice set of them that my father gave her from being stationed in or visiting Japan.
And she always wore pearls, jewels (that dangled and sparkled) and occasionally, moderate hoops. I think the large pearls were her favorites.
The overall effect of her was enchanting to me in her elegance and whenever I saw this famous Kennedy picture, I see my mother as she appeared to me on those nights:
And the entire house would be filled with the scent of "Shalimar". In the years since then, I can still see her as I looked up at her, much as Jackie must have seemed to her little boy grabbing her pearls!
So yes. I sure do miss that ceremony. I think it had value, but I understand much of it is simply nostalgia, and that's okay with me too.