Chapter 1
I have a dim memory dating back to when I was quite small, probably no more than four, wondering why I couldn’t be just the same as my twin sister, Meg. And that desire grew when, at age six, I became a fairy. Yes, a fairy! With wings! In our family there were four kids, two girls, Flora and Fiona, then the twins, Meg and me, Joe the boy. Mom was active in the local amateur dramatic society and – when I was six — it decided to stage Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. That play, very romantic, has a number of fairies in it, four of them little ones. So my three sisters and Susan, a friend of Meg’s, were cast to be those little fairies. But at the last minute Susan had to drop out – there was a family emergency – and Mom decided I would have to be the fourth one. I had a helmet of hair over my ears and bangs; I got the dress Susan would have worn and by all accounts I was a cute little fairy.
I loved it, and after that a new game took hold at home – without our parents’ knowledge – me dressed in some of Meg’s clothes to be Meg’s twin sister, Josie instead of Joe. As time went on Flora and Fiona lost interest, but Meg and I did not.