A text popped up from my sister. It was a faded photograph of four little girls sitting in grass, that badly needed cutting, in front of a brick church. “Do you know any of these little girls?” she asked.
Yes, one I know quite well. I grew up with her. I played Barbie dolls with her.
I read books to her. I went to school with her. I was saved and baptized with her.
Then, somewhere around the time of college graduation, she became me. In the photo, I am about 8 years old, and I am dressed for church. My bangs are crooked, because Mama could never cut them straight, and I am wearing a homemade blue dress with fluttery bell sleeves with lace around the bodice and a wonderful headband.
Though Mama made most of my dresses until I was 17 when I could earn money for store bought dresses, she put splendid effort into what she sewed. If I found a dress in a store window I liked, she would study it then come home and cut a pattern out of newspaper. She could copy it brilliantly.
Nothing she ever made was plain except for my play clothes of shorts and tee shirts — though often, girly-girl that I was, I would priss outside to play in a dress. As soon as Mama discovered me hanging on a tree limb in a dress, she hauled me back inside for appropriate red dirt attire. She made dresses with ruffles, lace and, later, more modish clothes for a teenager.
I was allowed to have mini dresses and skirts but not too mini. Whatever was in fashion, Mama and I were the first to know (even that hid.
