When was the last time you saw me in a dress or skirt and top? I’ll bet you can’t remember! Hanging in my wardrobe you could find the dress I was married in, a crushed velvet skirt I wore when my waist was about 24” and the “flower power” skirt I wore when I was very pregnant for the first time. There is one skirt in there I’ve worn within the last 2 years but really I’ve given up on them. When I was a kid though it was a different time and a different story.
Every girl I knew had a “party frock” which was worn to the various birthday parties. No way was there a different dress for a different party, you wore the same dress until it didn’t fit, then you got a new one. I remember one girl’s parties I always looked forward to, her mum was a good cook and there were always “Cream Puffs”, choux pastry balls filled with cream. Another girl’s party I remember for her wonderful Ice-cream Birthday Cake.
The games were the same at each party. Pass the Parcel, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Musical Chairs, Oranges and Lemons, a Scavenger Hunt and often but not always, Burst the Balloon. You had to sit on a balloon to burst it & there was usually great trepidation involved. We left the parties with Birthday Cake wrapped in a serviette, a little white paper bag filled with lollies and sometimes a balloon.
As I think about the parties I’m reminded of a book we had called, “Amelia Bedelia and the Green Umbrella”. Amelia had brothers and sisters and when she went to a birthday party she took her green umbrella and dropped all kinds of treats into the umbrella to take home to them. When it was time to leave the party though it was raining and an adult insisted on opening the umbrella for Amelia Bedelia and of course when she did all the treats fell out. It was only a story but I felt Amelia Bedelia’s anguish, I imagined myself in the same situation.
You didn’t know that about Nana did you?
Musings of a Retiring Person 