Debbie is the oldest member of our TG support club, here in Ottawa. She always attends our biweekly meetings and I have heard her claim that the first and third Saturdays of each month are the high points of her life in the Veterans Home where she now lives. Debbie is the name we know her by, but her given name is Derek.
Derek survived the North African Campaign in 1943 without suffering more than severe burns during his tour of duty as a tank commander. Then he took part in the Anzio landing in Italy before being called back to England where he trained for the D-day Normandy landings. That was where his luck ran out and he spent the next three years in hospital.
Debbie’s hand is now unsteady and she is grateful when Sheilah does her eye makeup for her. We all like to hear her reminiscences, but Sheilah has become a particular friend. One day she asked Debbie, "Can you tell us more about your childhood, please? Everyone loved it when you told us about the time your mother caught you."
We all gathered round her and Sheilah escorted her to our small stage.
My earliest recollections are of my preschool days in Lewis, the island off the northwest coast of Scotland where I was born. I was the first son in the family and my brother was not born until after I started school. We lived with my father’s parents and my uncle and aunt. We were the rich people of the village. The other twelve houses were all what we call black houses, but we had a house of two stories with a slate roof. A black house is a single story house built of stones and covered with a thatch made of barley straw and seaweed. The roof was usually held down with a fishing net thrown over it, weighted down by rocks, otherwise the roof might blow away. It has no windows or chimney and floor is packed dirt. In the centre of the floor is a fire pit where a peat fire burns constantly, the smoke going out through the roof, turning it black.
We had a real fireplace with a chimney and a peat-burning stove in the kitchen for cooking, so that we did not need to cook over the open fire. And we had real wooden floors. Upstairs were four bedrooms, one for my grandparents, one for my uncle and aunt, one for my parents and one for all the kids, me and my cousins, where we all slept in the one bed.
Oh, how I envied my cousin Deirdre her clothes! She could wear a cotton dress in summer, not the scratchy woolen kilt that I wore summer and winter. And, those lovely cotton panties. How wonderful they must be to wear. Boys wore nothing under the kilt and that coarse, itchy wool could drive me mad. In bed there was nothing to choose between boys and girls, we all slept in the buff, but once we dressed in the morning then there really was a difference.
The men were all fishermen and crofters. They crewed the herring boats during the season and kept sheep. Some of them grew a few vegetables. Granddad owned his own herring boat; as I said he was a rich man, by the standards of the village. Spinning and weaving was women’s work, but knitting was a man’s task. Grandmam owned the only loom in the village and it dominated her work room on the ground floor. The loom was in constant use by the women of the village, at least during the h ours of daylight. We had no electricity, of course, and the light of oil lamps was not enough for the weavers. The men, on the other hand, could go on knitting late into the evening, sitting around a table companionably, each man with a tot of whiskey at one hand and a pint of beer at the other, telling stories, usually in Gaelic, but sometimes in English, knitting away and designing the elaborate "Fishermen’s knit" sweaters. Each young man would be trying to produce something more elaborate than the next one to impress his girl friend. Peacocks they were!
We only had three colours of wool, the off-white of natural white sheep wool, the dark brown from the so-called black sheep and indigo dyed wool. Any man or woman knew how to dye wool with indigo, but no other dye was used. The indigo came from the woad plant, which was quite common growing on the stone walls.
All of us boys had to learn to knit before starting school at five years old. On the first day of school we were expected to be wearing a sweater we had knitted ourselves and the kilt woven and sewn by our mothers. That was the school uniform summer and winter, no underpants, no shirt under the sweater, just that horrid wool against the skin.
I still knit today, but my hands stop me from making anything too complicated. I have sometimes had strange looks from other people, especially when I have been in army uniform, waiting, perhaps at a railway station. They never listen when I tell them that where I come from knitting is a man’s job. In the Veterans’ Home the physiotherapist thinks that knitting is good therapy and has been trying to get some of the other vets to try. No-one will, though. They think it sissy stuff, especially as I am held up to them as an example and they all know how I like to dress.
We used to make our own knitting needles from fencing wire, sharpened on the grinding wheel that granddad kept in the barn. The barn was an old black house, but no one lived there, only the cattle and sheep. Between the barn and the house was the well from which we drew water, carrying it in buckets to the house. We were rich, we had our own well and did not need to share the village well. We all had to take turns carrying water from the well. Saturday was bath night, when a tin tub was placed on the kitchen floor and filled with hot water heated on top of the kitchen stove. First the girls would take turns bathing, adding more hot water as it cooled down, then the boys, and finally the adults. By the time grandad had his bath the water was pretty muddy.
There were no roads, only trails over the moor. To visit another village we went by boat, rowing all the way, but to go inland or across the island we had to walk the trails. Dad was a schoolteacher in the town of Shtornabeigh, which you call Stornaway, and after I started school I would walk with him over the moors, 4 miles each way every day. These walks made extra school classes for me, for Dad could never stop teaching while we tramped along.
I suppose I was about six years old, in my second year at school, when my cousin Deirdre said to me one day, "I’m a little girl. Are you a little boy?"
"Of course I am. Don’t I look like a boy?"
"Show me then."
I had no idea why she said this, for we saw each other naked every night. She knew from direct observation the differences between little boys and little girls. I threw up my kilt over my head and showed her.
"No! Take off your kilt. I want to try it on."
I unfastened my belt and loosed the straps of the kilt, allowing it to fall to the floor. Deirdre picked it up and rubbed it against her cheek. It seemed to me that she liked the feeling of that rough wool and I could not understand why. She freed the bow at the back of her dress and slipped out of it.
"Give me your sweater too. I want to try it all on."
I pulled my sweater over my head, standing naked, since all wore was my kilt and sweater, with my leather belt.
Deirdre started to put on my kilt.
"Not like that, Deirdre. You wear kilt with nothing underneath."
She dropped her cotton panties and stood as naked as I was. She picked up my kilt and wrapped around her, fastening the straps on the right-hand side and asking my help for the left-hand strap. I buckled my belt around her and handed her my sweater. She pulled it over her head.
"How do I look, now? Do I look like a boy?"
"You certainly do, especially with that short hair of yours."
"Why don’t you put on my knickers and dress? I would love to see you wearing them."
I could hardly hide my excitement at the idea but I tried to pull a face as if I did not want to do any such thing. I hoped that Deirdre would press me more. I had to deny the idea, but at the same time I hoped that she would override me.
And override me she did. She held out the panties, or knickers as she called them, and gestured to me tp [ut them on. I did so with gestures of feigned reluctance. Oh, what a lovely feeling! Why could I not always wear knickers undeer my kilt.
"Now, put on my dress and I will tie the bow behind for you,"
"Don’t you find that kilt itchy?" I asked.
"Not at all. I love the weight of it, so much more solid than my stupid cotton dress."
I stepped into the dress and pulled it up around my shoulders, then turned to Deirdre to fasten it up the back and to tie the bow. Why did she call it a stupid cotton dress. It was a lovely, airy garment, smooth to the touch, not itchy like my sweater and kilt. Sure she could not wear it in winter, but this was summer and I adored the coolness of the soft cotton.
The next day we walked together across the moor to school with my father. Deirdre lagged behind and I dropped back to see what was the matter. She whispered in my ear, "Let’s do that again this evening."
I did not need to ask her what we would do and for the whole of that summer we swapped clothes whenever possible. Deirdre never tired of the game and she soon realized that I loved it too. It stopped only when my aunt and uncle moved away, taking her and her brothers with them. Now, there were only the two of us to share thatd bedroom and bed, my kid brother and me. Now I no longer had the chance to wear girl’s clothes, but I was growing fast and I was son big enough to wear my mother’s garments. I missed the camaraderie of the two of us both cross dressed and it was more fun to wear the clothes of a girl my own age.
And it was not really too long until I too left Lewis and could begin to collect my own wardrobe. Dressing in the army was something else again, but that is a story for another evening.
Now, nurse, it is time to leave these young folks to their dancing. I think it is warm enough not to need my coat tonight, so let’s be on with it. Good night all.
© 2001
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