Not The Perfect Girl

Just before my parents and brother and I drove to Cameron, Missouri for my mother's Davis family reunion at the farm of one of her older brothers (she is the youngest of 18). I cut off all of my blond hair to about two inches long with some scissors from an art kit my Uncle Lee brought me from a trip he took. For some reason my dad had picked us up at nursery school and left us in our rooms. That's when I did the deed. He must have called my mother at work, and she came home in a flurry, racing up the stairs as if the house was on fire.

As she came up the stairs I started down them to see what the fuss was all about. She grabbed and hugged me as if I was injured but in fact it was she who was wounded because I wasn't going to make the perfect girl impression at the reunion.

Off to the beauty shop for a trim. This one act of mine was a game changer. Up until that point I went to the Dora Neil beauty shop every Saturday to get my hair "fixed" for Sunday church. It was a fun place because there was a parrot that said lots of words, but it wasn't fun to sit still that long just to make an impression for one day. Somehow I knew that but I complied. After I cut my hair off, my mom would make me lay down on my back on the kitchen counter so she could dig her long red fingernails into my scalp to wash my hair. I used to cry for my dad to wash my hair, but he knew better then to interfere.

The reunion turned out to be something unforgettable, even 7 decades later. My cousins would say the same. We were at my Uncle Otto's farm in the afternoon, and as I got out of the car I could see the biggest barn on the property. I'd never seen a barn before. Just then my mom's sister, Ethel came racing out of the farm house and grabbed me up as if I was a feather and kissed my face. Wow! Where has this wonderful beautiful woman with her hair in a bun, and round rimmed glasses been hiding?

Two days of lots of scenes like that plus riding on a tractor, feeding cattle, running through the field, and best of all finding my only "girl" cousin who was quite the city girl tom boy. She was a few months older and sure of herself so that created a fun time of exploring and not getting into trouble for not being the perfect girl.