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.
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