Hand-Me-Downs

One consequence of having parents who grew up in the Great Depression, who ran a household where income was only modest, was wearing hand-me-down clothes.

In those days of course it was still a "thing," when families were still large enough and neighbors close enough that clothing that was still wearable was handed down from one child to the next, one family to the next. It was great for play clothes, getting clothing that was already a bit worn, and no one cared if you wore them in the sandbox or running around in the yard. Nicer clothes could be kept for school and church and all.

I had two sets of cousins. One on my dad's side -- I don't think we ever got clothing handed down from them. My aunt was a fashion plate, rather self-absorbed, and perhaps the idea of putting my cousin's cast-offs into a box and sending them to us never occurred to her even though we were just a year apart and about the same size. My aunt on my mother's side, however, had five children and had grown up in a household with very little income and a lot of economizing, where a box of hand-me-down clothing was a welcome gift. She was the one who boxed up whatever clothing her children had outgrown and sent them to us.

However, my aunt was sixteen when my mother was born, and her kids were all much older than my brothers and I. When a box came, one never knew what might be in it, or how old it might be, or what era the styles came from.

By the time I was in the third grade, my aunt's sons were grown men, so they were no longer outgrowing and handing on clothing. There were two girls in the family, and the youngest was seven years older than me. It was mostly her cast-offs that were boxed up and sent to us.

But still... one never knew what the box might contain.

My cousin's sartorial tastes were... not to put too fine a point on it... kind of a running joke in the family. When she was in Jr. High and High School she was sewing her own clothes, and it was when the 60s "mod" fashions were all the rage. When people today think of the 60s, they think of hippies, and no one remembers mod fashions, Carnaby Street, go-go boots, mini skirts, long swingy hair, and all that. Brady Bunch fashions were kind of the tail end of that era. "Mod" also meant that styles came and went as fast as Superman's speeding bullet. Empire waistlines, waistlines down at the hips, short skirts, plaid, stripes, skinny pants, bell bottoms, it all came in and out of fashion. On top of all that, my cousin liked to define her own style, so some of the things she made for herself were... original. Unique. Creative. And five or six or seven years out of date.

But it all ended up in a box, mailed to us, for me to sort through.

So there I was, eight years old, going through a big box that had just been mailed to us. Mom opened it up and said, "Here, sort these out." And sort I did. At age eight, living in yet another house, starting third grade in the fourth school I'd been to, I didn't have much of an idea of fashion. I didn't hang out with the cool girls, didn't even know that designer labels existed, and had only a vague idea that "mod" was a style. But as I sorted through the box I found some things that I wouldn't mind wearing, and others that were definitely out, and I sorted them into piles.

While there were some decent school dresses in this particular load, there were also some things that were wildly inappropriate for an eight-year-old kid. Shiny orange fishnet tights. White vinyl go-go boots that I'd certainly never be allowed to wear to school. A sparkly gold lamé shirt that my dad laughed at and called an "Elvis shirt." 

We all got a laugh out of those tights, and many a joke about going fishing was made. Though the Elvis shirt might scare off the fish, they said. 

Once I had sorted everything, I called to Mom and said I was done.

She took one look at my two piles, the decent stuff and the discards, and was not pleased. Not pleased at all.

Discarding any of the hand-me-down offerings was definitely not on her agenda. Her sister had been nice enough to send the items, and I should be grateful for them. "I didn't mean that," she said, pointing to my discard pile. "I meant sort them out by size and hang up the ones that fit you now. We'll store the rest for later."

If ever my jaw actually dropped, that was such a moment. I sat there faced with the pile of clothes that we'd all just been laughing over, all those crazy clothes that were out of date and the family joke and weird and even inappropriate. And I was supposed to hang it all in my closet? I was supposed to wear it all?

So long as my closet was full of hand-me-downs, no matter how odd, whether I wore them or not, I got very few new clothes and most of that was underwear. All I could do in my own sartorial defense was wear the things that were least objectionable and keep stuffing the ones I disliked most to the back until I outgrew them, at which point my mother would huff, "You outgrew this already? I don't think you ever wore it!"

But until the hand-me-down boxes stopped coming, it was the best I could do to not look too freaky and not draw too many sneers and snickers from the cool girls in their cool styles.

Born Reader

The year before I was ready for kindergarten, my mother had the idea to hold a little "play school" at our house. For a modest price, a handful of kids from the neighborhood came over to our house for an afternoon of what amounted to pre-school for us and daycare for the neighborhood moms. Mom was the teacher, and we had story time, crafts, and some quiet games. Since I was otherwise alone with Mom when my brothers went off to school, it was a chance to get some socializing in, and Mom made a little side money. A pretty good deal all around.

So at age somewhere about half-past three, at the close of a "play-school" day, while other kids were getting picked up, my mother turned around and saw this happening:

Me, with another girl, a book open on my lap, reading away to my friend. As Mom listened, she realized I wasn't just babbling words or making up a story. The words coming out of my mouth were indeed the words on the page.

She must have memorized the book, was my mom's first thought. But she came over and asked:

And at my end of this interchange... I wasn't sure why she was asking that. Of course I was reading it. What else do you do with a book? I wasn't in trouble, was I?

And of course at Mom's end of the interchange, she had to check to find out if what she was seeing was really what she was seeing. She found another book and handed it to me.

I promptly opened the book and read from it just as well as the book I'd been reading.

Well, that made the family headlines around the dinner table. "She's reading already!" At three and a half, that's a pretty remarkable feat, giving any parent some genuine bragging rights. Mom did read to us quite a lot, and I suppose I picked it up just following along with the words. Woo hoo, something Mom thought was a good thing to do paid off!

This was at a time when the wisdom handed down from the education experts on high was, "Don't teach your children at home. Just let them play. We educational experts have developed the best methods to teach reading and math, and your children's teachers will use our methods to teach them the proper way when they get to school."

Well, heck with that, my mother thought, as I gobbled my way voraciously through every children's book in the house and everything we brought home from the library.

As for me, finding out that I, the youngest of the family, was doing anything remarkable was intoxicating. Especially when any family or friends of my parents were over, and it was, "Isn't this amazing? She's reading already!"

And while all this was going on...

... in the primary grades in the nearby elementary school, where teachers were using all the approved methods to teach children how to read, my brother K was struggling.

Now, there's no knowing whether or not, if he'd learned a little reading at home, that his dyslexia would have been diagnosed any earlier. After all, kids weren't even expected to know their alphabet before kindergarten at that time. What my parents knew from the reports sent home from his school was that words just didn't behave on the page for him. He flipped letters around. He had trouble distinguishing certain sounds: bull and bowl, for example, sounded alike to him. When he said milk it often came out mulk. As a result, the phonics-based methods that were used to teach reading at the time were knocking the stuffing out of him.

K was the middle brother, already overshadowed by our oldest brother, M, who could do everything better than he could simply by virtue of being three years older. And now here was baby sister, three years younger, doing something that K was struggling to do: read fluently.

I was only vaguely aware that any of this was happening. All I knew was that K "didn't like reading all that well" and we'd go to the library to try to find "books he'll like." And though K and I used to play together, I was aware of a sudden and rapidly growing friction.

Soon, K became my harshest critic. Any time I was drawing, he'd say, "You're copying that!" Or, "That doesn't look anything like the picture." If I read aloud, he'd jump on any mistakes. His toys were his, jealously guarded, and if I got any new toys myself it was, "Why does she get one of those and I don't?" K was never going to let me get the jump on him again. He'd assert his superiority at every opportunity. At one point my artist aunt watched him draw and while scribbled something -- I was being a smart alec at the time -- and said that K was the creative one, and I wasn't. Harsh, that was, and K crowed over it.

At the same time, a new phrase entered my world:

Showing off. "Wow, she's reading already," devolved into, "She's showing showing off again," and my brothers were quick to tattle. Everyone expected M to lead the way with learning and skills, being the eldest of us. But I, the youngest and a girl at that, was expected to dial it back, waaaay back. Not only for K, but for the other kids in the play-school. "You might hurt their feelings," Mom explained.

Other people's feelings. Isn't that so much a traditional girl-child's role? To take responsibility for other people's feelings? To never let herself do anything better than the boys for fear the boys won't like her?

And so that became part of my family role. Yes, read and perform perfectly -- perfection would become the minimum expectation eventually -- but shhh, don't show off about it. Wait for other people to notice.

Imagine how well that works in adult life.

The enmity between us continued on, within a few years reaching ridiculous extremes, where K would say, "I like that candy," and I'd say, "Yeah, I like it too," and he'd say, "Oh, then I hate it." And mean it, spurning that candy from that moment onward. It wasn't until he reached college age and moved out on his own that eventually he let go of the rivalry. Maybe once he was making is way in the real world the old rivalry didn't seem nearly as important. Maybe for once there was no Little Sister to blame things on when things went wrong. Maybe adulthood gave him a better perspective.

Whatever the case, it's fine between us now. I never wanted the rivalry. Even as a kid I'd try to patch things up between us, once I understood what had been happening with him. But it's still something to explore to understand how things went so badly so quickly and how that shaped my world as I grew up.

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The Good Girl

The summer between second and third grade, after living in two different towns and going to three different grade schools (a new one opened up the middle of my second grade year), we moved back to the town where I was born. Dad got a job with the state, a job that would at last remain stable, and the idea was that we'd buy a piece of land and build a nice house. For that reason we rented the house I lived in all through third grade -- which was sold out from under us the next summer and we lived with my grandmother for a year while we finished building our house, so add two more grade schools to my list -- and my mother went back to work part-time at first, then full-time, so they could afford the land and the house.

Both of my grandmothers lived in town, so during the summer, while Mom was at work, my brothers and I would spend the days with our grandmothers, each on alternate days.

My Grandma H still drove her own car, and while my brothers went out and picked beans and strawberries to earn money (I was never allowed -- "You're a girl," my parents said, because... I don't know), sometimes Grandma H had to go to the store or to the doctor's office.

While she was at the doctor's, of course I'd sit in the waiting room. I always had a library book with me, and there were plenty of Highlights and National Geographic magazines to keep me occupied, avid bookworm that I was. While sitting there absorbed in my reading material, sometimes I was vaguely aware of being watched.

I never thought much about it. I was just passing the time with my books or magazines. Eventually Grandma came out and off we'd go.

Some time later that summer, Grandma said she'd heard from the receptionist that the other elderly ladies in the waiting room had commented on what a good little girl I was. When they saw me left alone in the waiting area, they'd at first thought the worst: I'd run around, make noise, play with toys, and generally annoy them. But instead I sat very still and read silently until the appointment was over. What a good little girl.

Compliments were few and far between when I was that age. My mother firmly "corrected" any deviancy from her notion of The Perfect Girl, my brothers made sure I was reminded daily of their superiority and my inferiority, and Dad had nearly adult expectations of our behavior. But here, oh! here I had a high compliment about things I was really, really good at! I was quiet, I was well-behaved, I was a good reader. I was a good little girl!

Every time after that when I went places with Grandma or any other adult, I was a Good Little Girl with all my might when I had to wait. I was still, I was silent, and I kept myself occupied. I would show everyone just how good I could be. 

It wouldn't be long, though, before I discovered how poorly my "talent" for being quiet and making myself practically invisible would serve me anywhere other than a doctor's waiting room in the company of older women with old-fashioned notions.

And I'm not the only one who has learned this painful lesson. In an article in Psychology Today, The Trouble With Bright Girls, author Heidi Grant Halvorson notes that by fifth grade, smart girls are quicker to give up on difficult tasks and yield to the boys because girls believe ability is innate and unchanging, while boys believe that ability is achieved with with effort. Why? Because of the "good girl" trope:

How do girls and boys develop these different views? Most likely, it has to do with the kinds of feedback we get from parents and teachers as young children. Girls, who develop self-control earlier and are better able to follow instructions, are often praised for their "goodness." When we do well in school, we are told that we are "so smart," "so clever, " or " such a good student." This kind of praise implies that traits like smartness, cleverness, and goodness are qualities you either have or you don't. 

Boys, on the other hand, are a handful. Just trying to get boys to sit still and pay attention is a real challenge for any parent or teacher. As a result, boys are given a lot more feedback that emphasizes effort (e.g., "If you would just pay attention you could learn this," "If you would just try a little harder you could get it right.") The net result: When learning something new is truly difficult, girls take it as sign that they aren't "good" and "smart", and boys take it as a sign to pay attention and try harder.

 In The Confidence Gap, an article from The Atlantic, a similar theme is echoed:

School is where many girls are first rewarded for being good, instead of energetic, rambunctious, or even pushy. But while being a “good girl” may pay off in the classroom, it doesn’t prepare us very well for the real world. As Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychology professor and the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, put it to us: “If life were one long grade school, women would be the undisputed rulers of the world.”

And dozens of scholarly articles find the same thing still happens: girls tend to be praised for being quiet and good, boys get praised for doing things.

Now throw a few more things in the mix. I was a born introvert. I'd already been The New Kid In School several times and would be several more times. We were buying an acreage and my parents' time, attention, and finances would soon become entirely wrapped up in house building and starting a small farm, and my brothers and I were used as free labor every weekend. My mother went back to work, and I wasn't allowed to have any friends over or go to anyone else's house after school when my grandmother was watching us and later when I was a latchkey kid. My social skills stagnated, while my emotional needs were just not on anyone's radar.

I was become more and more isolated, with fewer and fewer friends. And my biggest talent for which I got any praise at all was being "good," quiet, and... invisible.

6th Grade Sex Ed, 70s Style

What they taught us:

The reality:

Pink, Blue, and Infinite Shades of Mauve

Somewhere in one of my mother's family photo albums is a photo of me at age not-quite-three in a cute little cowboy suit, toy pistols and all, that some doting relative got for me. I don't have access to it at the moment, so I'll try to recreate the gist of it from memory. 

I was pretty small when I got it, and I don't know that I wore it all that often. It was a costume for dress up play, so my mother would not have thought it appropriate to wear outside the house. I think I outgrew it fast. And I have vague memories of being a little too yippie-ki-yi-ay when I had it on, so that may have been one reason it was kept in the back of the closet and only brought out on rare occasion when I was "being good."

Even without all the trim and holsters and silver-tone conchos and all in the picture, it's evident why my mother called it a cowGIRL suit. It was pastel pink. It had a short little skirt -- with fringes? Pretty sure it had fringes. 

I knew better, though. It was a cowBOY suit, and I firmly and repeatedly corrected anyone who said otherwise. I didn't grok the cowGIRL thing. It was cowBOY or nothing.

And therein was the opening salvo, a warning shot over the bow of my mother's Good Ship Perfect Daughter, the first strains of the overture in a lifelong tragicomic operetta that might be titled, "I Gotta Be MEEEE." Subtitled, "I'm... I'm a WHAT exactly?"

My mom had some pretty solid ideas of what a girl ought to be. Images like these from a couple of knitting books that she handed down to me are exemplars of what she had in mind when she put in her order for My Perfect Little Girl TM Patent pending, Bettie Page bangs and all: 

Perfect little girls, from what I gathered, were:

• Dainty and delicate.
• Always adorable.
• Well-behaved.
• Clean and perfectly groomed.
• Neat and tidy.
• Mommy's little helper.

Her ideas of what little girls should wear were solidified in the 40s and 50s, so that even in the 60s/70s she resisted any notion that I could wear pants to school, and she sewed me some dresses in a tiny flowered print with puffed sleeves and poofy skirts that were the latest in style when she was of an age to start planning her Perfect Little Girl TM Patent pending. So yeah, in '68 and '69 or so, when the other girls were all hip in flared jeans and mod dresses and mini skirts, I was turned out like something out of a Fun With Dick and Jane reader. 

Meanwhile, after I learned to read at a very young age and was gobbling up every Early Reader in the house and the nearest library, I slurped up my brothers' Henry Huggins and other Beverly Cleary books, science books, mysteries, Indian crafts and lore books, and spent time looking longingly at the pictures in brother K's Cub Scout manual like these:

And these:

And these were illustrations for Arrow Point requirements. Requirements! WOW! Not only did boys get to do exciting things like climb trees and build shacks and make electromagnetic cranes, they got awards for it!

Sign me up! I thought.

Now, I was pretty cognizant about the physical differences between boys and girls. I knew that I had all the physical characteristics of a girl. But... I was nevertheless the kid who insisted I was wearing a cowBOY suit. I frequently wished I'd been born a boy because my brothers and their friends got to do cooler things than I did. I knew from the girl bits in my underpants that I wasn't physically a boy. Nor did I identify as a boy. But... "I'm a girl" never quite rang true for me, either. I had dolls and doll clothes, but I didn't do much with the dolls besides put the clothes on them. I preferred being out in the sandbox with my brothers and their Tonka trucks, but no one got Tonka trucks for me. My brothers got chemistry sets. I asked if I could have one. I got craft kits, which were okay, and tea sets, which I had no idea what to do with.

Mom reminded me over and over that I was her "dainty and delicate" little girl. Sometimes when I got to play with my brothers and things got a little wild, Mom would cry out, "Where's my dainty and delicate little girl?" and if I got snarky and said, "I didn't know I had a sister," that put a swift end to play time then and there and I was sent to my room. My brothers scorned "dumb girl stuff," and wanted nothing to do with the few girlish things I was be interested in. My dad... he seldom had much to say about gender roles and what little girls "ought" to be (beyond the time he saw me reading Captains Courageous and said, "Isn't that a boy's book?), but when it came to choosing family outings, it was Dad who chose and we did the things Dad liked -- fishing, going for a hike, going to the beach, camping, going to the zoo, outdoor stuff like that, and we all participated. It was stuff I liked doing, too. By the time I was six I could bait a hook and clean my own fish. Besides learning to cook, which was a little like chemistry (actually it's a lot like chemistry), and needle crafts, I didn't much like housekeeping and other traditionally feminine pursuits.

So... I had a lot of questions. Questions that never got asked because there wasn't anyone willing to have that conversation and there weren't the answers then that I might have gotten these days.

At that time, you were a girl or a boy, period. The only alternate state, for a girl who liked to do boy things, was "tomboy" (there was no socially acceptable alternate state for boys who liked to do girl things). A tomboy was clearly a girl, identified as a girl, but liked rough-and-tumble play, preferring to run around with the boys instead of staying home and playing with dolls. The tomboy story, though, always seemed to culminate in the day when the former freckle-faced little gamin in braids made her debut at the prom, all long gown and smooth hair and chic poise and all the boys who had been her playmates stood there with their mouths hanging open and then stumbled over one another to ask for a dance.

I wasn't confident and extroverted enough to be the classic tomboy, nor did I harbor any illusions as I got older that I'd blossom into a glamorous sylph. I didn't feel like a chic girl who had it all together. I wasn't going to ever be a boy, either, I knew that.

So what was I?

The only things I could say with certainty about myself at that tender age were:

• I was an avid reader.
• I was a maker of things.
• I was creative.
• I liked the outdoors.
• I was messy.
• I hated pink.
• I liked blue.

I was not what my mother had ordered, something I would feel ever more strongly as I grew older and less and less inclined to follow the path she'd so meticulously planned out, which she seemed to take as a personal affront. But that core "me," whatever it was, however non-traditionally-gendered, was a stubborn Old Soul that refused to budge in the face of societal and motherly pressure. 

I knew, even when the youth of the 60s were hitchhiking across Europe or meditating with gurus to "find themselves," exactly who I was. It was that solid sense of self that would be my saving grace, what would literally keep me alive, in the maelstrom of my young adult years.

Insomnia

I knew I had a problem falling asleep at night. But I didn't realize how much of a problem it was until just a few years ago when I read an article on "sleep hygiene" that said something to the effect of, "if you still aren't asleep after 20 minutes..."

And I thought... 20 minutes? Do real people fall asleep that fast?

Because ever since I can recall, it took me a whole lot longer than 20 minutes to fall asleep. A whole lot longer. I can remember being sent to bed at the same bedtime year-around, regardless of when the sun actually set, lying in bed on a summer's evening in a room that was too light even with the curtains drawn, listening to the TV playing off in the living room where everyone else was watching it, and feeling that a world in which the rest of the family watched TV while I had to be in bed by 7:30 (up until I was in second grade, when my bedtime was moved all the way to 8:00) was truly unfair.

Even in the winter, even when it was dark at bedtime, I would still lie in bed hearing the sounds of the rest of the house, until my brothers were sent to bed, then finally the TV was turned off, and my parents went to bed, and silence settled in the house.

In the meantime my eyes were wide open and my brain was going whirl whirl whirl...

I had my stuffed animals for company. All of them. ALL of them. I didn't want any of them to feel left out or rejected. I had a lot of deep-seated anxiety around rejection, so every soft toy I had was piled up in my crib. It's a wonder there was any room left for me.

There are, of course, kids with sleep problems who bounce back out of bed, play with their toys, lead their parents on a merry chase around the house, and so on. I never did. There was a good deal of strictness in our house, so I suppose I didn't dare.

I had something going for me, though. I had my imagination. The time between getting tucked in and the time I finally did fall asleep was spent spinning stories in my head.

The earliest ones were riffs on the television shows I watched. Mostly they involved Batman, the campy 60s TV version. My stories included a character of my own, a projection of myself into the Batman trope, that I named Flying Boy.

Flying Boy had whatever awesome super power I needed for him to have for whatever tale I created. Flying like Superman was obviously one of them. There might also be characters from other shows. The Monkees might make an appearance. As time went on, various superhero cartoons added to the stories, and they grew longer, more complex, and a whole lot more dramatic.

Falling asleep initially was problematic enough, even with the inner stories going on.

Waking in the middle of the night, though, starting when I was about four... that was a far bigger problem.

I can recall being about three and I couldn't find anyone in the house. For some reason I was inside and everyone else was outside doing yard work. I ran from room to room, looking for them, and exploded into an all out panic attack, afraid to my bones that somehow it was their time to die and I was all alone. Mom heard me crying and came in to see what in the world could be the matter, and chided me about crying for "nothing."

By four I guess I figured out that people didn't just die and vanish, but waking alone at night was still fraught with anxiety.

Lying there, my mind awhirl with wordless thoughts, I needed to know. There were people in the house, right? Everything was okay?

I'd try making up stories, but even my active imagination was no match for the smothering darkness, as cold anxiety seeped in like dank stormwater flooding a leaky basement.

I wanted to call for Mom, but the night was huge and scary, and all that came out at first was a tiny whisper.

Once I squeaked out something audible, I worked up the nerve to add a little volume.

I wasn't even thinking about what I wanted, only concentrating on getting the words out. Eventually, after many tries and much ratcheting up of courage, I cranked the volume up enough to be heard down the hall.

Another call or two, and I heard my parents' bedroom door open. In the backlit glow of the bathroom light streaming in from the hallway,  Mom eventually appeared, her hair up in pink sponge curlers (this was the 60s -- I think all women went to bed wearing pink sponge curlers), looking bleary-eyed. It was, the middle of the night, after all.

At that point -- what could I say? I was four years old. I didn't have the vocabulary or the self-awareness to say, "Mother, I am suffering from free-floating anxiety and existential dread, and I require a few moments of comforting, if you would be so kind. Really, observing that you still exist is a great help."

What came out instead was:

Mom would sigh, give me a brief hug, and tell me to go to sleep. Off she'd shuffle back to her room.

I'd lie back down, pull the blankets over my head, press myself up against my mountain of stuffed animals, and eventually I'd go back to sleep.

This went on for a while. Long enough that it became a problem. Not every night, I think, but often enough that Mom got tired of it. Her youngest child was four now, long past the time when children were supposed to be sleeping through the night. Dad had to be awake early to go to work, and of course she had to be up at the same time to get breakfast, feed us kids, get my brothers off to school, and tackle the day's chores. Having to get up in the night to comfort a wide-awake child just wasn't working for her.

That was when she decided to Do Something About It.

The next time I cried out in the night, she didn't respond.

I went through the whole routine, whispering, then speaking aloud, and finally calling out. Many times. And still no one came.

That may have been the last time I called for Mom in the middle of the night.

As far as my mother was concerned, the problem was solved. Stop rewarding the undesired behavior, and the undesired behavior goes away. Perfectly logical.

Her problem was solved. She got to sleep the night through.

My problem, however... not so much.

I still woke at night, many nights, then and for years and years after that. I still lay awake, swamped with anxiety, my active brain filling in the darkness with whatever monsters it thought must be there, because when the subconscious part of the brain starts cranking out the anxiety chemicals, the logical part says, "There must be something out there to be afraid of," and fills in the blanks.

So I lay awake, night after night, wrapped in my blankets and wishing morning would come.

Lesson learned: After bedtime, when darkness fell... I was entirely on my own.

At four, left to cope with paralyzing anxiety, in the dark, all alone.