This will be the last week I can wear white pants.

The women in my 1960s household were strict adherents of a well-known but unwritten etiquette rule stipulating that white garments and shoes were to be worn only in summer, which officially closed--in terms of fashion--on Labor Day, when kids in the Cleveland suburbs, where I grew up, started their new school years. There was some debate as to whether the white-wearing season began at Easter or Memorial Day; Easter in northern Ohio often demanded snow boots and ski jackets, so everybody remained flexible, depending on the weather.

It's obvious that this rule is hardly relevant today, as everybody wears whatever they want, whenever they want, regardless of the setting or occasion. There's no reason I should continue to obey its dictates. But it reminds me of the stylish female members of my family, who made it clear that this was a regulation not open to debate. So I stubbornly stick with it.

Besides, my white pants--one pair cropped, one full-length with wide legs and a third narrow and stretchy, though not........

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