Early Calendar (1955)

When I was a little girl, my favorite movie was "Lady and the Tramp," which I saw with my family at a movie theater in the summer of 1955. My favorite part of the movie was when Lady and "the Tramp" went to an Italian restaurant and shared a plate of spaghetti, which led to a kiss. At 6 years old, I wanted to grow up to be as good and beautiful as Lady and to marry someone as brave and handsome as "the Tramp," but I doubted that anyone would ever want to marry me when I grew up.

I remember making the above "calendar" (see previous postings for my Calendar Series), choosing the letters that made up my name, drawing shapes, cutting out pictures from a magazine, pasting the pictures on the paper, and carefully placing big stars to fill out the page. My mother had narcolepsy and cataplexy, along with migraine headaches, which is why I cut out the pictures of the two women who appeared to be sleeping during the day, one of whom appeared to have a headache.

My mother was sleeping during the day while I worked on this project. I was proud of my creation and showed it to her when she woke up. My mother was enraged and scolded me for using up all the stars from the star box. At the time, I felt awful for using up all the stars. Now I wonder why she was so angry. Maybe it was a side effect of the narcolepsy medication, Dexedrine, that she started taking in 1954 after my youngest sister was born and continued to take on a daily basis throughout the rest of her life. Maybe she had a migraine headache. Maybe it was because I woke up her up to show her what I had made. Maybe she didn't know why she was so angry. I'll never know.

I remember that the last time I saw her, 10 months before she died, she told me that she was tired of being angry. It was only after my mother died that I was able to fully feel anger, and only then did I begin to understand my mother.

I am so glad that my mother saved this.