Spring ads featuring colorful, sleeveless frocks similar to those I wore when I was in high school and college have beckoned me away from a column about people who found buttered toast and into a byway.
Now I’m too old and plump to wear those fashions! Ditto for today’s high heels. I can’t believe the shoes that women are wearing. How ever do they manage to walk? They’ll ruin their feet and backs, quoth the old lady. Oh, how I wish that I could wear them!
I finally gave my classic, fifty-year-old Deliso Debs to Amvets since I hadn’t been able to wear them for years. Oh, they were lovely — black high-heeled suede with a silk rose with a pearl in its center on the instep. Parting with them saddened me. How silly! Why should a pair of shoes mean so much to me? Because I’m a female, that’s why! Also, giving them up symbolized an unwelcome rite of passage.
The trunks in my mind’s attic contain multi-layered memories of predictable events that appear like clockwork in their appointed seasons. Thinking about those fashions set me to rummaging until I found Easter. It’s wonderful that we humans have the ability to enjoy simultaneously three time zones: the past, the present and the anticipation of the future.
One year Mother ordered an outfit for me from Sears and Roebuck. The coat was daffodil yellow. I said nothing, but I yearned for a short, fleecy white jacket like the other girls wore. Also, I couldn’t have stylish black patent or white shoes until Mother discovered Stouts. My feet were impossibly long and narrow, and I had to wear horrible brown Girl Scout shoes and boys’ black basketball shoes for gym. “Why can’t they cut off my toes?” I sobbed. “I won’t go to church!” “You will too, Missy, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.” Young and old, everyone in church stared and tittered behind their prayer books at those awful shoes surmounted by that garish coat. Oh yes they did!
“The bread we broke was more than bread.” — Jan Karon
From the time I was a child I have loved the great feasts of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. We could partake of any number of lovely buffets at fine restaurants or let “Mrs. Kroger” provide dinner, but nothing can compare with well seasoned comfort food of a old-time Hoosier cook such as my mother, my great-aunt Laura or friend Jana’s aunt Naomi. It takes a lot of loving work to set a pretty table with the best china and silver and to prepare a feast, that will create special memories that will warm our hearts in years to come.
Vicki and Tom were here for the dinner that replicated my mother’s menu: ham, homemade rolls, slaw, Mama’s corn pudding, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, and candied sweet potatoes. I buy frozen balls of dough for the rolls, and since my Christmas dinner disaster of slopping sticky sweet potato syrup onto the bottom of the hot oven and which even dripped down into the pan lid drawer and onto the floor, Vicki did the potatoes!
My parents, siblings and their spouses aren’t here to gather around Mother’s round oak dining table. Vicki is in her forties. Vicki and we no longer color eggs, using a Peter Paas kit. Those little rascal grandboys don’t stand by our bed these days and stare at us and giggle until we wake up. They have jobs, their own homes, and a wife or serious girlfriends.
Now the grand day has passed. I shall lovingly wrap it in tissue paper, gently lay it on top of the other memories and close the Easter trunk until next year, P.S. Time turns upon itself. In a hurry to find a blouse to wear to church, I sent out to Sears at Washington Square. wclarke@comcast.net