I Too Had Braids

Mother of Invention inspired me to dig out this old photo from when I was 5 years old. Here’s what I remember about that time in my life:

– This was taken right around the time of my birthday. I was wearing one of the few store-bought dresses I had as a child. It was a blue and white stripe with a lace collar. The buttons were little white bumpy balls. I loved that dress.
– My Norwegian grandmother was visiting us at the time on one of the few forays she made outside the state of Minnesota. She braided my hair in a way my mother was never able to duplicate. She said uff-da a lot.
– That was my one and only year to take dance lessons. My class was a tap-ballet-acrobatics combo. At the end of the year, my parents asked me to choose between dance class and kindergarten – a pretty heavy choice for a 5-year-old! I chose kindergarten.
– In the picture my hands were probably in little balls because I was a nail biter back then and didn’t want the world to see.
– Life seemed so simple at 5. My big decisions were things like who I should play with that day, whether to go look for tadpoles in the stream, what new trick I might do on my swing set.