postscript
JULY/AUG 2021 / DONNA MOFFLY
I
“Guys who hated going to doctors lined up in her waiting room for those body checks they used to pooh-pooh.”
was born a redhead, taking after my father. He looked pretty much like Arthur Godfrey—a sort of chubby redhead who liked Lipton tea. I also married a man who was basically a redhead. I know, because when Jack tried to grow a mustache during one Bermuda Race, it came in pink. His first night ashore, after a very celebratory evening, he was snoring on his back in our bed at Newstead, when I took out my roll-on mascara, stood over him and inked it in to see if I’d like it better. I didn’t. The next morning he awoke thinking somebody had stepped on his face with newly polished shoes. I don’t think blondes have more fun. I think redheads do. They just have to be particularly careful about fun in the sun. In my teens I didn’t know that, of course, and would loll around pools with the best of them—mostly my brunette friends—and am now paying the price at the dermatologist’s. I used to go to a young woman who was so beautiful that guys who hated going to doctors lined up in her waiting room for those body checks they used to pooh-pooh. They were sorely disappointed when she left town. Among blistering stories from my innocent past: Senior year at Hathaway Brown, Dede Zilm’s parents chaperoned six of us on spring break in Fort Lauderdale. The first day my legs got so badly burned that, following God-knows-who’s advice, I spent my vacation applying coffee cream on one and wet tea bags on the other to see which healed faster. (The cream curdled and the bags fell off. Oh, well.) But Doris Shilliday itched so much she had to go to a doctor’s office where she became so agitated about her sun poisoning that she bared her
westportmag.com
88
chest to the receptionist. At Wellesley, we used to go up to the roof of our four-story dorm Freeman Hall, slather our uncovered bodies with baby oil and lay there holding large pieces of cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil to catch the rays. Helicopters full of sailor boys from the Boston Navy Yard took to flying overhead. But the whole romp ended when Miss Clapp, our college president with an unsettling name, was showing some visiting dignitaries the new dorms when somebody on the roof stood up. Nude. (Not me. I never did nude. In fact I’ve never even done bikinis.) Probably the worst burn I ever got was picnicking at Plymouth Rock with some M.I.T. types. The sun was fierce, and I turned painfully purple. No wonder those poor pilgrims wore so many clothes. In any case, I’ve always worn long pants and long-sleeved shirts on sailboats and sometimes socks on the beach, though I draw the line at shoes. On vacations in Barbuda, I’d just take cover under a palm-leaf wicky with my books and needlepoint while my friends soaked up the sun. Who’s to care if I came home the same shade I left? Then, too, I’m a hat person, as was my mother before me. She was also the only one I ever knew who carried a parasol to stave off the rays. So if you need to borrow a white straw parasol with little pink roses on it, that’s in my attic, too, along with a ton of hats. Whatever you do during these hottest months, first thank God we can be outdoors again instead of stuck indoors in Covid isolation. And second, even if you look silly, do whatever it takes to have a healthy, happy summer. G
VENTURE PHOTOGRAPHY, GREENWICH, CT
OF SUN AND TAKING THE HEAT
