Easter 1952 or 1953

Until she died when I was 16, my mother made all my clothes (except bathing suits and, as I needed them, underwear beyond little girl frilly panties). She even ordered Harris tweed from Scotland to make my first real winter coat. She took me to fabric stores to shop for patterns and fabrics; she asked me to select yarns for sweaters.

I think her favorite dress-making came at Easter when she made a new dress and Daddy took a picture of the two of us posing in the yard. (Based on the outward thrust of my chin, I think this must have been 1952 or 1953, prior to the effects of orthodonture.) Here we are on Memory Lane in front of her rock garden, which she planned, planted, and maintained. In the bed to her right, in a spot hidden by the tree, she killed a copperhead with a hoe while I watched from a bed of day lillies just below the cross-tie steps in front of us. In that same bed she planted the galax Calla sent from camp in the fall.

Now the photograph is framed with the newspaper clipping on which Mother wrote, "first attempt." I don't know when it appeared, but I assume it must have been in The Birmingham News on a Mother's Day prior to her wedding to my father. Not only did my mother make clothes, but she also made occasional poems, of the sentimental and the humorous kinds. Read the poem, and you will see that Mother followed a tradition set by grandmother, whom we called "Dear."