Dressing for Church

It was 1945; I was three years old. I wanted to go to church. I told Grandmother. She was reluctant. Why did I want to go? We weren’t church going people. I’d heard of it, I told her, and I wanted to go. I wanted to go for several weeks and eventually Grandmother told me that she’d thought about it and it might be a sin for her not to take me, so she would.

But what religion should she take me to? She had a long monologue with me about it and I remember it with delight, such wonderful words! 

First of all, there was no way she was going to take me to a Catholic church. All Catholics were poor and it was because they had so many children; it was indecent. And the parents pierced the ears of their girl babies when they were infants. No one had pierced ears but Catholics and if you saw a woman wearing pierced earrings, you just knew she was Catholic. They had to eat fish every Friday too, which was ridiculous. We definitely were not going to a Catholic church. One of her own sisters had married a Catholic and had had ten children and degraded the prestige of the whole family. But we don’t talk about her.

Baptists had lots of churches around, but they had too many rules to follow. Some of them didn’t believe in wearing makeup or dancing. Grandmother wore makeup every day of her life and wasn’t about to quit just to go to church. And she and Pop loved to dance. They used to take my mother to dances when she was still in her baby carriage. Nobody was going to tell her she was a sinner because she wore makeup and liked to dance.

Episcopalians were good, upper class people, but they were known to be snooty. They thought they were better than everyone else and Grandmother was not about to be treated as a second class citizen by anyone. Episcopalians—six whole syllables—what a wonderful word—I wanted to be one of them just for the word.

Methodists were neither good nor bad, sort of barely middle class. We could do better.

Presbyterians, now there’s a thought. They’re nearly the same as Episcopalians, just not as snooty. And your father was Presbyterian, now I think about it. That might work. I’ll send Pop to find out if they have a nice church nearby in a good neighborhood. Presbyterian—five syllables—not as great as Episcopalian, but it will do.

“Can we go this Sunday?”

“What? No, of course not, we haven’t anything to wear.

“Pop, we have to take this child to church. You’d better go buy a new suit.”

Grandmother started sewing in earnest, sewing and shopping. She made a new linen dress for herself and shopped for new shoes, hat, purse, and gloves to go with it.

My brother was one and a half years old. She found a suit for him with a white shirt, a tie, and nice black shoes.

But for me she went overboard. She made a navy blue pleated wool skirt with suspender straps on which she embroidered a cluster of pink, blue, and yellow flowers. At the seventh store she shopped, she found navy blue yarn that matched the skirt fabric and knitted me a little bolero style sweater. Of course, I needed a blouse. She had noticed that my blouse sometimes came untucked, no matter how hard I tried to be ladylike, so she made a white blouse and petticoat and sewed them together at the waist band. She embroidered matching pink, blue, and yellow flowers onto the collar. 

In spite of daily polishing and my serious efforts not to get them dirty, my white ankle boots were a bit scuffed and Grandmother decided that for this occasion I could have my first pair of Mary Janes. All that was not enough though. She sewed lace around the cuffs of my white socks and around the collar of the blouse.

“Are we ready yet? Can we go to church now?”

“No. Of course not. You can’t go to church without gloves!”

More shopping and she came home with a pair of tiny white kid gloves and a white kid leather purse for me, and finally, the last piece of the ensemble, barrettes with pink, blue, and yellow flowers for my hair.

At last, we were ready to go to church..