Once Upon a Time..

Here we have our parents' wedding reception, before we were ever thought of. It was held in the K-ville Woman's Club, where every wedding reception, shower, graduation, or event was held. Even the Hee Haw party. I remember that place as being very echoey and always full of dusty sunlight.. and there was always a little bowl of pastel mints sitting on a table somewhere. Dad looks too young to shave and mom looks young and alive and non-frumpy.. even though Gm did make her dress.
Here's that dress now.. old, yellowed, and the victim of my childhood dress up trunk for years. It now hangs in my craft room closet alongside my ball-and-chain halloween costume and a suit which is too small for me, but which I can't bring myself to get rid of. (Gawd that was an atrocious sentence, but oh well.)

And then... this happened. On the back of this picture, my mother wrote that she was 26 years old when it was taken. Now, I ask you, does this look like a 26-year-old woman? She dyed her hair gray for chrissakes! She almost looks younger than that now! But oh, it got much much worse. Trust me, you'll see.. I have more pictures to post. But I will save them for later.

Note that this is possibly the only picture in existence in which her arms are bare and she is actually sporting a v-neckline and not a chicken-neck collared blouse and jacket that covers every possible centimeter of skin. The scarf is kind of kicky and completely out of character. Cute, but unusual for her. I would love to be able to go back in time and give her a good strong talking to. "Girra, we gon hafta do sumpin' bout dis. You cain go roun lookin like dat. It jest wrong."

Hmm, if our childhood was such a comedy of errors, can you imagine what hers must have been like?? LOL I shudder to think...

Edited to say that she is pretty lovable, frumpiness notwithstanding. She drives us insane, but she is lovable. For every crazy, neurotic thing she has done, she has done something equally sweet and she has loved us with everything she had. She's just ... weird and she can't help it.