Yellow Dresses

Mama used to say, "Joanne will wear any color as long as it's black or white, or red or blue."

Mama was wild about yellow, which has always made me look red-faced and gray-haired. I wore my old clothes that were not yellow, except when I had to dress up. I'm sure it's not true, but it seems like the only new clothes I ever got were yellow. I wore a yellow "A-line" dress (which means it looked like a tent) for my first day in second grade. At Jones Valley grammar school I was in a pageant, and wore a yellow net long dress. In junior high I had a yellow-and-orange striped feed-sack dress which I really didn't hate. For the class play in my senior year, Mama bought me a yellow pique dress, about 4 sizes too big. At least 2.

But by golly, when I went to D.C. with my senior class, Daddy bought me a black peau-de-soie "cocktail" dress with blue glass flowers on the skirt. The fact that it was also a couple of sizes too big hardly bothered me at all.

I think when Mama grew up, the average dress size was a 12. I know all our grown-up dress patterns were size 12 until I got out of high school. Since then I have owned two "yellow" dresses, but they were mostly white with some yellow print.