One Picture Is Worth . . .

Most of the sample blogs I looked at have a photo – this seemed like a good one for starters as it tells a lot about my sister and me – then and now. Naturally she has the fur piece and the dressy purse while I have the cloth stole – she has always had classier and more expensive tastes than I. The baby in the stroller/grocery cart is definitely mine – I had tons of baby dolls while she was a big Barbie fan.

The stuffed dog had to be hers as I have never been an animal lover – dogs jumped up and licked you (yuck!), cats scratched and left hair all over you (yuck, again!) and horses were huge and smelled bad (triple yuck!) To be honest, I was a fairly obnoxious and prissy kid – think Lucy in “Peanuts” or Margaret in “Dennis the Menace.” (After two boys, lots of boy birthday parties, burping contests and sleep-overs, numerous hikes and camping trips, and some positive encounters with animals, even horses, I think I am safely out of the “prissy” stage.)

The mystery about this picture is the hats. Kay’s must have belonged to Nana who had a large collection of them, all in variations of this shape. Nana was well under 5 feet tall and always wore hats because she thought they made her look taller. My dad loved his mother-in-law very much; but said privately that, when you’re built like a fireplug, wearing a hat just makes you look like a fireplug in a hat (albeit a taller fireplug.)

However, the hat I am wearing had belonged to Nana’s best friend, Ethel. They were truly Mutt and Jeff as Ethel, at probably 6 feet tall or more, towered over Nana. She was “statuesque” with high cheekbones, bronzy skin tones and sleek black hair that she wore in a huge knot (it was too beautiful to be called anything so mundane as a bun.) I imagine she had some Native American ancestry – think the dancer, Maria Tall Chief. Well, Ethel gave that rich rose-colored velvet hat with the fetching little balls to Kay who treasured it and wasn’t big on sharing it. (She turned down all sorts of tempting offers including probably a lifetime supply of candy from our cleaning lady who wanted the hat very badly.) The mystery is how I got her to let me wear it for this photo – either I knew something she didn’t want me to tell mom or she was getting her ducks in line for a big haul from Santa Claus.