Saturday's Old Photo

This photo continues the theme of last week's old photo. It's another glimpse into my childhood. This one is of my sister and me with two of our friends. Can you guess what we're doing?

We're playing wedding with our dress up clothes. My sister and I didn't have many toys, but we did have a collection of dress up clothes that was the envy of all our friends. My mother had access to a "missionary barrel", which had a never ending supply of interesting items for dress up, and she had a real eye for seeing the possibilities in the clothes found there.

The groom in the wedding is me. I'm wearing a cape made from half of an old black quilted circular skirt. The bride is my sister, wearing a made-over white woman's dress and a curtain panel veil. The bridesmaid is my friend Colleen Emery, and she's dressed in a light blue woman's dress remade to fit a young girl. The little girl peeking out from behind me is Dawn Weinert, who was a few years younger than the rest of us. She did not want to dress up that day--I think the whole idea made her uncomfortable--but she wanted to be in the picture.

(The circular skirt morphed into a cape is a something that my mother repeated again and again. One Christmas she gave my oldest daughter a cape made from a very brightly coloured quilted circular skirt, and oldest son's gift was a cape made from a grey wool flannel circular skirt. Oldest daughter put hers on, stood on the coffee table, announced, "I'm a butterfly!" and took a flying leap. Oldest son, not to be outdone, stood on the coffee table wearing his cape and announced, "I'm a moth!")

And what ties today's photo together with the photo from last week? See that sidewalk we're standing on? That's the sidewalk of Northern Bible Church, which is 4 miles north of Bemidji, Minnesota. We're playing on the sidewalk because we lived next door in the parsonage. The church is still there, but the parsonage isn't.