Camouflage

WHEN MY TWO LITTLE GIRLS were very young, I made them both wear Dutch caps. I don’t remember where I found the bonnets, but I recall that they were pretty. White with some blue embroidery, they covered the ears and tied conveniently under the chin. I remember, too, that I made the girls wear them on a visit to see my old school friend Minna and her mother in Johannesburg one day.

This must have been in December, sometime in the late ’60s. In those days, my husband, my daughters, and I would fly from New York to visit my mother in South Africa during the Christmas holidays. Strangely, however, I don’t remember my husband being with us that day. Perhaps I have conveniently erased him from the picture. I know we were staying at a hotel called the Sunnyside Park, with a large garden and a pool, and that it was summertime there, of course, sunny and warm. My husband must have remained behind at the hotel.

The children would have been about three and five at the time, and we would all have dressed up to see Minna and her elegant mother, Mrs. Howe. I have a photo of myself from that period in which I am wearing a pink linen dress, with my hair brushed out on my shoulders. I suppose I had the sort of looks that one doesn’t have to think too much about. My mother used to