A is Always for Almost

In my first baby picture, I’m no baby; I’m almost three years old.

In brand-new Sunday best, I’m wearing my first costume: the ensemble my parents brought to court. They want me to look nice for the judge, and for posterity – for the photo of “the day we brought you home.” It’s the winter of 1958. My parents, Marguerite Isobel Stobie Palmer and Robert David Palmer, have just signed my adoption papers. The judge banged his gavel and the Toronto Children’s Aid caseworker put their re-clad, renamed daughter into their arms. The photos are in black and white, but I remember my ensemble in living colour. From head to toe, I’m the blush pink of a newborn rose.

It’s February. I’m plenty warm. My bonnet is a rich, quilted velveteen. Three pink rosettes with minty green leaves embellish the white ribbon on the crown. Like every well-dressed girl in the 1950s, my bonnet matches my coat. It’s the same pink velveteen, sporting the same white ribbon trim and identical rosettes on the collar and cuffs. Of course, my coat matches my dress; it’s also velveteen, with an ornately embroidered yoke of festive holly green, trimmed with the same minty leaves and rosebuds. I have pink mittens, hand-knit by my new mother. They dangle on a pink string, attached to my coat collar with a pink safety pin. When she covers my mouth with a pink scarf, I smile. Of course, I do; I’m a good girl.

This outfit is the first set of big girl clothes, and the only set of new clothes, I’ve ever owned. The white leotards are my first pair of tights. I’m concerned that these strange new people do not seem to think I need a diaper, but I do not complain. Even my underpants have rosebuds. In each detail, my mother has chosen deliberately and well: pink and green in exactly the right shades to makeover nobody’s child into her little girl. When she wrapped my auburn curls around her finger, they fell in place like Shirley Temple’s ringlets.

But two things ruin the picture: the left one and the right one.

My shoes.

When my new father slipped an ensemble-completing pair of unwearable pink shoes into his overcoat pocket, my new mother sighed. I had to wear my baby booties. Curved over sideways, with broken laces, they matched my feet. When my new mother laced them up, she seemed to think their sides could be pulled together. Trying to close the gaps my shoes require on either side of their tongues, she tied them too tight. Looking down from my perch in her arms, I remember the perfect f