This relic from my past is my mother’s 8th grade graduation dress. So my mom was born in 1920 so she would have graduated 8th grade in 1934 in the depression. They didn’t have much to eat, so she was very, very thin and tall like I am. I think I could fit in this dress when I was about 10 years old and outgrew it by then. So my mom was the youngest of seven children, as remarkable as it may seem, as remarkable as it is, my grandfather was born during the Civil War. You got that? […] My mom had four older brothers and two older sisters.

By the time I was born all the brothers were gone—they were deceased and I had these two aunts. My mother and her two sisters, when we got together at the holidays were just on each other all the time. They would have memories of things that happened in their childhood and my mom would say, “Gee that wasn’t like that! You know it wasn’t that way. You’re making it up!” So this was in a cedar chest in my mother’s house when she passed away. I’ve been an orphan since I was 40, so I just keep it in a little bag wrapped in tissue in my closet.

This belongs in The Museum of Moms

Exhibited by Tamara

Transcript edited by Sarah Crawford