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Monday, July 14, 2008

Atheist in Pink

The previous post made me think of some other clothing I had as a child.

In first and second grade in Massachusetts we had both our individual photograph portraits taken as well as a group ensemble class photo outside on the steps of the old school. These were done on different days. My mom, who liked to sew and thought she was saving Mr. Scrooge money by handmaking clothing, sewed me a fairly awful dress when I was six. It was made out of bluish grey cotton and was extremely plain looking. I couldn't complain because I feared I would be murdered, due to past experiences of complaining and being lectured to and yelled at. Pretty much, I had no say and no objections to anything as child--at least I didn't VOICE the objections much--for fear of being murdered.

I wore this homely dress to my first class portrait in first grade. I can't remember what dress I should have been wearing to the second grade class portrait. See, something happened with the photographer's film. It got exposed, or ruined somehow. So no one ever saw those photos. Instead, we had to have our pictures taken a second time. And somehow, no one knew--at least *I* didn't know--when that second time was going to be.

Because I lived under a Scroogian dictatorship at home, I didn't have a lot of clothes to choose from. Shatters your preconceived notions of an only child, huh? Dresses I wore one year had the hem taken out for the following year. And when there was no hem left, there could be an extra row of fabric to sew on. That plain blue-grey dress that my mom made had that happen to it. An extra row of fabric with some brick-a-brack was sewn on. I hated brick-a-brack. It's so cheap and peasant. Who on earth ever thought that was attractive? So one day in second grade I was wearing that altered ugly dress that I had worn for my first-grade group photo, and SURPRISE! The photographer was there to take our second grade class photo! I had on the same bloody dress I wore to the first grade class photo!

Who on earth in this country--in the 1960s, mind you, not during the Great Depression--has two class photos wearing the same clothes two years in a row? It's not that my parents were so evil that I only had one dress to my name, or that they knowingly made me wear the same dress on group photo day. It was just that I had so few clothes that the odds were so favorable of being caught wearing the same dress on two different days.

But it wasn't all bad. My parents bought me, off the rack, not special ordered with lots of money invested, just off the rack, a new dress for First Communion (thank GOODNESS my mother didn't attempt to sew it). Here is some of the foreshadowing of my Atheism. All of the other Catholic girls I went to the dreaded Sunday School with wore white dresses to their First Communion. These dresses of theirs were intended for one purpose only, and that was THE dress they wore one day only, the day they would become the virgin child-bride of Christ. Maybe an older sister or cousin wore it to her Communion, and maybe she would hand it down to a younger sister, but those dresses saw no light of day other than on the Holy Child Wedding Day. And the tradition would continue down through the ages of virginal white child brides of Jesus. But not me. My dress was pink. There was no tradition there. My mom didn't go to church when she was young--how I envied that and wished I could've enjoyed that privilege. There was no one to inherit a white Communion dress from, and no one to hand it down to. My Pink Communion Dress saw secular days as well, birthday parties and other times when I felt like dressing up. My Pink dress said screw tradition, screw virginal child brides, screw white. It was what marked me in a crowd of colorlessness and shocked the other Catholic parents with their matching white child brides. It said, "she walks among you, but she is not one of you." It said, "in a crowd of blank canvases on which to paint your Dogma, here's an artist who is already painted, painted with a Pink Scarlet Letter, painted with her own Stigmata...you can't touch this, you can't touch it, so don't even try 'cause she tries to spin around and snatch her Guardian Angel to kill it. She doesn't want her Guardian Angel, she'll have none of that White, she's Pretty in Pink."

I don't think my parents realized what a radical thing they were doing. It wasn't a specially ordered dress for that "special day" nor was it a hand-me-down dress that was steeped in a tradition of other Communions from older sisters before. It was just an off the rack dress. It was secular. That dress had no faith and no tradition. And best of all, it was PINK. They innocently thought a pastel pink dress was a nice change from all the white. Although their naivete about other things has driven me up a wall--how could they be so clueless about so much--this was a fortunate sort of cluelessness. Although none of my peers made fun of me because I wasn't wearing white, deep down I knew my dress was different. And I liked it.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Stan said...

The pink dress and this whole entry is a very beautiful work. There must be something telling in the pink dress and I'm very surprised that even your father didn't make sure you had a white dress like the tradition would have required.

2:46 PM  
Blogger Rowan said...

Pink, the color of womanhood and femininity! Awesome. My favorite quote today? "she tries to spin around and snatch her Guardian Angel to kill it."

I love that!


Dawn

1:35 PM  

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