My earliest childhood rebellion involved my hair.

I was born in the waning days of Shirley Temple’s popularity. For whatever reasons, my mother, Trellis, and my sister, Mary, (17 years my senior) found it important and amusing to imagine me a small replica of the fabulously popular child star. But this fantasy never went past Shirley Temple’s curly hairdo. (Singing and tap dancing lessons for me might have actually been fun.)

So, many nights, probably not every night, my straight and thin blond hair was was moistened and rolled up in metal curlers before bed, and I slept with the curlers in my hair all night. The next day the curlers were carefully removed and the perfect curls assembled. 

Of course the day came when all of this was a bit much. I was close to seven, and, strangely, I didn’t protest the curlers, I protested the hair styling the next day. I must have said something like “I want to do it myself!” And I did. I got a hair brush and pulled it through my hair as best I could. It was a tangled mess, but I didn’t care: it was my way and it wasn’t “long curls”.

I don’t remember if my hair was ever put up in curlers after that, but I do remember that my hair was a continuing source of contention between my mother and myself. My hair was pretty straight, and permanents didn’t really do much good for an active child. I wished that she would braid my hair like some other girls in the neighborhood, but I think braids were too countrified for Trellis. There were various failed haircuts and experiments. Nothing satisfied both me and my mother. 

Trellis had cultural baggage about hair, as she had about other things. I have seen photos of Mary with curls similar to those Trellis wanted me to wear. Mary’s hair was thicker and darker than mine, but not curly either. So, for my mother, there might have been an element of trying to repeat what she done successfully once before. Of course, Cape Girardeau, Missouri in the 1930’s and Oakland, California in the  1950’s are very different places and times in which to raise children.  Mary was pretty and popular, and that’s what Trellis wanted for me, but I wasn’t having any of it. 

One of Trellis’ frequent words to describe me was “contrary”, so the scrimmages about hair were probably part of a larger picture.

In the 1980’s I made a mixed media artwork called “Trellis and Aneta Had Fight.”