In the early decades
of the twentieth century, some professional photographers traveled the
neighborhoods, bringing ponies to fancy up the pictures. Families paid extra to
show off the kids on and around the pony. “What a photo to send back to the
family in the old country,” my mother
would say, adding “Won’t they be impressed!”
After our family got
a Kodak camera in 1924, we took our own photos, at home, at Lake Michigan,
anywhere and everywhere. But before then on a few rare occasions, we had formal
photographs taken by a professional photographer. In one, I’m sitting happily
on a pony with a tooth gapped-grin on my face, wearing a long-sleeved slightly oversized
white dress with a peter pan collar.
In front of me and
the pony, my older brother George stands, wearing a white shirt, dark colored knickers
and athletic shoes. Next to George are my “twin” older sisters Mary and Rose.
They weren’t twins, but that’s what I called them. They were one year and a few
months apart in age and different in stature and looks, but like twins they
lived in their own shared world, to the exclusion of everyone else, especially me.
The photo isn’t dated but I would guess I was 3 1/2, George 5, Rose, 6 1/2 and
Mary 8. The twins are both in white knee length dresses, with white stockings
and they are holding hands. Around the
same time, the twins, at the insistence of our fully Americanized same-age
cousins, learned how to stop speaking English in a Yiddish sing-song kind of
way. And the cousins taught them how to dress properly for school, in bright
white starched and ironed blouses, clean pressed skirts, with their shoes
polished daily.
In another
professional photograph, taken before I was born, a very young Rose and Mary
stand side by side. Rose has a serious look on her face; Mary’s is more
quizzical. Rose is fair skinned favoring Father’s coloring and has a chubby
baby face and fat arms. Mary who is a bit taller than Rose is swarthy, taking
after Mother and if once she had baby fat, it’s gone. They are wearing not-quite-matching
white dresses that hang almost to their ankles and large white bows in their
hair. Most likely these dresses, and the ones we girls are wearing a few years
later in the pony picture, were bought to last through growth spurts and were
saved to wear only on special occasions. Mary and Rose have almost identical
brown leather high-top shoes and are holding little porcelain dolls, also
dressed in white. Just like the pony, these dolls must have belonged to the photographer.
At home all we had were Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls that Mother made out of old flour
sacks.
The twins got to
hold the dolls. I got to sit on the pony. Lucky me! Or maybe lucky them because
in 1921 Mary and Rose had a second professional photograph taken of the two of
them, dressed like twins in matching outfits, looking self-assured and a bit
smug, especially Rose with her head cocked to the side.
Neither George or
I, nor three-year-old Perle had our pictures taken professionally in 1921.
The twins had each
other and I had George, who allowed me to tag along as soon as I could toddle
after him. And shortly after George went to full-day school at age six in 1918,
I had baby Perle who was born a few months later. From then on until I went to
full-time school in 1920, I had Perle to play with. When she was a baby, Mother
let me feed her and dress her and rock her and when she got a bit older, Perle
toddled around after me. Perle was so
much better than a borrowed porcelain doll or the home-made Raggedy Ann and
Andy dolls.
So, in our family
among the siblings, Mary and Rose made a twosome. And for a time there was me
and George, then there was me and Perle.
Thinking back to
this sibling configuration, I realize this is how we stayed into our adult
lives. Mary and Rose together, the married women with husbands and children.
George the only boy making his way on his own. And me and Perle, the two
unmarried spinsters palling around, that is until 1965 when Perle tragically
died too young at age 47 and 1967 when I finally married for the first and only
time at the ripe-old-age of 53.
The Clara Stories are dedicated to
Claire LeBrint Metzger, of blessed memory
b 1914 - d 2002
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