Saturday's Old Photo
Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 10:03PM I’ve been catching up on yardwork today, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with another rerun for the Saturday’s old photo.
A few months ago I got an email from the mother of Dawn Weinert. Sho had come across the post with this photo at the old blog, but by the time she found it, there was no photo, and she was hoping to be able to see the photo of Dawn. I promised her I’d upload the photo again as soon as I could. Then I forgot about my promise until today when I was thinking about which old photo post to repost. So this one’s for Blanche Weinert.
This photo gives a little glimpse into my childhood. In it are my sister and I and two of our friends. Can you guess what we’re doing?
We’re playing wedding with our dress up clothes. My sister and I didn’t have many toys, but we did have a collection of dress up clothes that was the envy of all our friends. My mother had access to a “missionary barrel” with a never ending supply of old clothes and a keen eye for seeing the play possibility in them.
The groom in the wedding is me. I’m wearing a cape made from half of a cast-off black quilted circular skirt. The bride is my sister, wearing a made-over white woman’s dress and a curtain panel veil. The bridesmaid is my friend Colleen Emery, who is dressed in a light blue woman’s dress remade to fit a young girl. The little girl peeking out from behind me is Dawn Weinert, who was a few years younger than the rest of us. She did not want to dress up that day—I think the whole idea made her uncomfortable—but she wanted to be in the picture.
See the sidewalk we’re standing on? That’s the sidewalk of Northern Bible Church, which is 4 miles north of Bemidji, Minnesota. We’re playing on the sidewalk because we lived next door in the parsonage. The church is still there, but the parsonage isn’t.
The circular skirt morphed into a cape is something that my mother repeated again and again. One Christmas she gave my oldest daughter a cape made from a very brightly coloured quilted circular skirt and gave my oldest son a cape made from a grey wool flannel circular skirt. My mother worried that he might be disappointed that his cape wasn’t as coulorful as his sister’s, but he didn’t seem to care. Oldest daughter put on her cape, stood on the coffee table, announced “I’m a butterfly!” and took a flying leap. Oldest son, not to be outdone, stood on the coffee table wearing his cape, and before his own jump, declared “I’m a moth!”
