This is a short excerpt from my second book; Don’t Worry Your Pretty Little Head, The Childhood Memoir of a towheaded Air Force Brat.

Mama doesn’t love sewing but she’s pretty good at it, and on an enlisted man’s salary, is forced back to the sewing machine to make most of our clothes when we’re very young.

She makes several things we call ‘bubble suits’ which are basically onesies with elastic at the top of each leg and buttons at the top of each shoulder. You only had to undo one button to step into the suit, put one arm through the arm hole, then put your other arm in place and button that side.

There’s a pretty bubble suit with little yellow flowers on it that’s my favorite. I put it on one summer day and notice that it’s kind of tight, but I leave it on and go outside to play. Mama sees me a while later and scolds me to ‘go inside and change before that thing cuts you in half’.

I’m probably six or seven and too old to be wearing a bubble suit anyway, but it is a sad day because I know that I have just outgrown all the homemade ‘baby’ clothes Mama made for us.