Luckiest Little Girl in the World

It is amazing how early the dye is cast. This little girl was a ruffian from the start, but tender too, easily bruised and very kind. Little has changed.

I recall the day this picture was taken as if it were yesterday. It was early, we'd come from Grandma's and I'd been "dressed up". A dress. Nice shoes. As we pulled in the driveway in that big tank of a car I became very excited. Boys were playing baseball in the makeshift ball diamond across the street.

"Oh, I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna go."
"Not yet," Mom said. "You have to get your clothes changed."
"I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna go."

I LOVED watching the boys play ball. I wanted to BE one of the boys playing ball. I didn't want to go in to eat. I didn't want to go in to sleep. I sure didn't want to go in to take a bath. I wanted to sit in the fine dust of the ball diamond dirt and watch the boys play ball.

And for this I needed wardrobe. That was the girl in me. The right clothes for the setting. I needed my hat, my glove, my bat. (To watch cowboy shows on Saturday mornings I needed my cowboy shirt, ironed, which is another story.)

We were in my room, Mom and me. It was summer, the casement windows were cranked open. In with the breeze that ruffled muslin curtains came the sounds of nearby play. The sharp crack of a hard bat meeting ball, whoops and cheers from boys thrilled at how far the ball had flown. The batter ran. Outfielders scrambled to scoop up the ball. The ball was thrown from hand to mit, from the outfielder to second baseman, thwop, to catcher, thwop. "Safe."More cheers. More whoops. And I was missing it as Mom pondered whether I should wear the blue chambray shorts or the yellow flowered skirt set. She had gotten only as far as my shoes. "Gotta go."

Her back turned, I grabbed my chance, along with my bat, hat and glove and darted out the door. I wasn't so much running away from real clothes as I was running toward the baseball game, my eye on the prize, as fast as my fat little legs could go. "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go."

So little has changed, nothing is really different. I wear more appropriate clothes now is all.

Before I got very far somebody snatched me up. "Catch her," I heard Mom's voice trailing behind me. "No, don't catch me, I've got things to do." But somebody did catch me -- my legs still flying, two feet off the ground. It was Daddy, laughing, dodging my bat, ducking my hat, bending to pick up my dropped glove. "Hold on there." He carried me back, presumably for more clothes.

"Set her down there." Mom had thought to grab the camera. It must have been out. It must have been loaded. We were not the impromptu photo kind of family. I remember looking at her, camera in front of her face, and me thinking, "Can't you see I have things to do. Gotta go." She snapped the picture and the moment was saved. Me and my wardrobe. My altogether. This is who I was, who I am. Then the moment was gone and I was off.

It would be years till I knew girls were not allowed to play ball, years more till I knew girls couldn't be carpenters or veterinarians... and even more years till I understood what it meant that girls couldn't just walk into Harvard to take their own hard won seat. I didn't know any of this on that day. I was merely there in my underwear being my very best little happy self and nobody dared tell me the battles that would come. Maybe they didn't know... maybe they couldn't bare to think about it.

When I look at this picture it tells me everything I need to know about myself, about who I am, which is that I am very lucky. And I think that if you are very lucky you know you are not where you came from or where you went to school. You are not the number on a bank account, nor a gender or an outfit... you are who you are. For better or worse, whoever you are at two is essentially who you are -- that is who you have to work with. Lucky for me, I came mostly equipped.