Originating Circle
Family
Church People & Little Children
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| Easter - Michele & Tim |
What Happened:
We always got new clothes for Easter--an Easter dress for me and patent leather shoes.
I played with Nathan Drucker, who was the only child my age in the neighborhood then. His parents took us iceskating. My parents weren't as friendly with them as with Mrs. Fox. This was my first encounter with prejudice, as the Drucker family were Jewish, and my parents weren't always careful about what they said. They have always been mildly anti-semetic, but generally keep it to themselves. They did welcome the Rabbi to dinner when he came to inspect Heinz Company for compliance with kosher standards. The Rabbi always brought us candy and my Dad a bottle of wine or liquor, which they always poured down the sink, as we were teetoling Methodists. He came every year throughout my childhood.
Mrs. Fox lived next door to us for many years. She let me play in her dress-up box when I went over to visit. I remember one dress made of brown crinkle crepe with tiny blue flowers and a long collar down the back I considered a cape. I felt so dressed up. I also dressed up my little brothers as they came along.
Mimi was an elderly woman from our church with scant white hair and no car. My mother picked her up every week to take her shopping with us. Mimi always bought a quart of vanilla icecream for us as a thankyou gift. I remember one time asking my mother why she did that, when we could buy our own icecream, and chocolate at that. Mom explained that in Mimi's day ice cream was an extra special treat that children didn't get very often. Mother took her shopping for many years.
My mother was always fooling with my hair, and I hated it. In one of the photos you can see the little pink curlers in my hair, which hurt my tender scalp. Once my mother started earning her own money she went to the Beauty Shop (as she still calls it) to have her hair done once a week. When she left home to marry my Dad she told her own mother, who was earning money by sitting with sick and dying people, to put aside enough money to have her hair done every week to keep from being depressed. At 90 my mother still has her hair done every Friday. She keeps her hair short and curled, and it is a pretty white. She's a cute little old lady, my mother. This is one of our lifelong unending conversations that started when I was born with long black hair. My mother was always curling it and putting ribbons in it. I'm sure I looked very cute. I
Additional life-long conversations include my bare feet, which make her cold, she says. And while you can see that in my baby pictures she is wearing wire rimmed glasses, she has always complained since I started doing so.
One curler memory has always riled me with the injustice of it: I was sitting at my mother's feet letting her put curlers in my hair and watching television, probably Perry Como. My father was enraged that I was not washing the dishes. He grabbed me and spanked me and told me to wash the dishes and no crying. I don't remember my mother saying a word, except perhaps, "Richard."