For my mother — Gladys Fern Hedges Sherman— the birth of a daughter six years after her second son was an answer to prayers—prayers so intense that she had at least one "false pregnancy" during those years of waiting. Oh, she dearly loved her sons, “Sonny Boy” (Robert) and “Bubs” (Lloyd), but as a seamstress whose skills would have carried her far in fashion design, her fondest wish was to have a little girl whom she could "dress up."
When I was born on December 19, 1931, her prayers were answered (almost). I was a healthy, precocious, baby girl. I immediately began to charm my brothers, who were old enough to be susceptible, but not old enough to be indifferent. My father, Val, did not spoil me (although some would say otherwise), but he was a tall, godlike presence from day one — especially on Sundays when he stood even higher in the pulpit. Nothing pleased me more than for him to come in the house and scoop me up to his eye level; I almost felt that I was flying up there, and from the safety of his strong arms, I could look smugly down at my brothers reaching up to embrace their father’s waist.
It was an idyllic picture with only one flaw—the baby girl with the soft smile and pensive eyes was almost totally bald. My oldest brother had brown hair in respectable quantity. My second brother had blonde angel ringlets thickly covering his cranium and cherished well after boy-hair cutting time. But the long-awaited daughter had little to none.
My mother was not deterred. She stitched away, dressing me in fashions copied after what the most-highly-placed baby girls wore at church and in the women’s magazines. She did not go to fantastic lengths to assist my hair to grow (even though later, when I had enough hair to work with, she did use curlers and curling irons occasionally). But my pictures don’t lie—up until I was over two years old, I had less hair than a Kewpie Doll.
This fact was brought home to me yesterday when I was going through some old scrapbooks. I found a picture of a large group of children on the front steps of a house that did not look familiar. I did not recognize it as a parsonage or the dwelling of some family member. When I detached the photo from the page and turned it over, I found my mother’s handwriting: “Annie Weatherby’s Birthday Party; Dorothy in Dorothy Jane Little’s lap.” I believe the location was either Comfort or San Saba, Texas.
Okay. That’s clear enough. Although there are actually three little girls in other children’s laps, it was not hard to pick me out. I was the one with the ears sticking out and less hair than the others. But when I showed this three year old girl to my husband, he said that it couldn’t be me—it was a boy! Look at the short hair. Only when I pointed out the fancy collar on my blouse and my long white stockings did he recognize that it was indeed his present wife.
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By the time I was five, I had a reasonable amount of hair, but I did retain a somewhat boyish appearance. At the kindergarten celebration of George Washington’s Birthday—an elaborate presentation that included play-acting and dancing the minuet in hand-sewn period costumes—I was chosen to be one of the Georges in knee pants, rather than a Martha in long skirts with a bustle.
Perhaps that was when the theater bug bit me.
But the cross-dressing must have marked me, for, to this day, I really am more comfortable in pants than in skirts. Yet, as my hair thins with age, I sadly suspect that I may leave this life as I entered it—bald!
