And it was happy—that girlhood of mine, after we came back to Andersonville. I can see now, as I look back at it, that Father and Mother were doing everything in their power to blot out of my memory those unhappy years of my childhood. For that matter, they were also doing everything in their power to blot out of their own memories those same unhappy years. To me, as I look back at it, it seems that they must have succeeded wonderfully. They were very happy, I believe—Father and Mother.
Oh, it was not always easy—even I could see that. It took a lot of adjusting—a lot of rubbing off of square corners to keep the daily life running smoothly. But when two persons are determined that it shall run smoothly—when each is steadfastly looking to the other's happiness, not at his own—why, things just can't help smoothing out then. But it takes them both. One can't do it alone. Now, if Jerry would only—
But it isn't time to speak of Jerry yet.
I'll go back to my girlhood.
It was a trying period—it must have been—for Father and Mother, in spite of their great love for me, and their efforts to create for me a happiness that would erase the past from my mind. I realize it now. For, after all, I was just a girl—a young girl, like other girls; high-strung, nervous, thoughtless, full of my whims and fancies; and, in addition, with enough of my mother and enough of my father within me to make me veritably a cross-current and a contradiction, as I had said that I was in the opening sentence of my childish autobiography.
I had just passed my sixteenth birthday when we all came back to live in Andersonville. For the first few months I suspect that just the glory and the wonder and joy of living in the old home, with Father and Mother happy together, was enough to fill all my thoughts. Then, as school began in the fall, I came down to normal living again, and became a girl—just a growing girl in her teens.
How patient Mother was, and Father, too! I can see now how gently and tactfully they helped me over the stones and stumbling-blocks that strew the pathway of every sixteen-year-old girl who thinks, because she has turned down her dresses and turned up her hair, that she is grown up, and can do and think and talk as she pleases.
I well remember how hurt and grieved and superior I was at Mother's insistence upon more frequent rubbers and warm coats, and fewer ice-cream sodas and chocolate bonbons. Why, surely I was old enough now to take care of myself! Wasn't I ever to be allowed to have my own opinions and exercise my own judgment? It seemed not! Thus spoke superior sixteen.
As for clothes!—I remember distinctly the dreary November rainstorm of the morning I reproachfully accused Mother of wanting to make me back into a stupid little Mary, just because she so uncompromisingly disapproved of the beaded chains and bangles and jeweled combs and spangled party dresses that "every girl in school" was wearing. Why, the idea! Did she want me to dress like a little frump of a country girl? It seems she did.
Poor mother! Dear mother! I wonder how she kept her patience at all.
But she kept it. I remember that distinctly, too.