Tomboy in the middle

It’s April 9, 1950, Easter Sunday and also my grandmother’s birthday. I’m five, and my grandmother and I are visiting her youngest brother and his children Paul (4) and Ann (8). I have an aversion to dresses, to anything with ruffles or lace, and to patent leather shoes that must be kept shiny and clean and therefore cannot be worn while running through muddy fields. Even on Easter Sunday I wear my cousin Joe’s hand-me-down trousers, cardigan, and battered farm boots, and so far I am blissfully unaware that there are qualities girls are supposed to have, or that I lack them. This is a relief to my grandparents, as they are poor and can ill-afford clothes for the unfortunate love-child their daughter has dumped on them. 

I spend mornings with my grandfather at the hardware store, afternoons alone in the back yard with the basset hound. I climb trees and feed chickens, and my favorite toy is an old wicker fishing creel containing a hammer, a screwdriver, and a rusty file. I use the hammer to crack open rocks and construct miniature stone walls and towers. I build tiny cities of moss and sticks and people them with Tom-Thumb-like imaginary friends. I have no interest whatever in learning to cook, clean house, or play with dolls. 

They say I’m a Tomboy, and I grin with pleasure, thinking it’s a term of praise. This photo is made a few months before my mother will marry and take me away from the place and the people I know and love, a year before I will contract rheumatic fever, which will make me an invalid and confine me to the world of books till I reach my teens. 

This photograph arrived in today’s mail, sent by Ann, who is standing beside me in the photo. I haven’t seen her since we were teenagers, but recently she visited another relative who who put us in touch again. Ann’s little sister, who hadn’t been born when this photo was made, is married to a man whose sister was a dean at Smith College when I taught there. Small world. 

I thought I’d check to see what Google has to offer for “Tomboy,” and I find an article that discusses “Why Calling Someone a Tomboy is Hugely Problematic,” and then a BuzzFeed survey of Instagram accounts that document “Tomboy Style.” There’s also “A Short History of the Tomboy” that covers the racist origin of the term and concludes the best future for the word is “a name for children of all sexes and gender identities who romp with spirit and deliberateness.”  Funny how well that fits, sixty-eight years later.