The Scents of Fall

I switch my light summer fragrances to those with warmer accords when the air turns cool in September. More often than not, the perfume I reach for on chilly mornings is Chanel No. 5.  When I drive over the misty bridge that spans the cove in my town, I often shiver into my scarf or turtleneck and catch a whiff of the blanketed dusty rose that makes up part of the composition of the world's most famous perfume.

Searching for vintage Chanel No. 5 ads is so much fun that I may do a series of them here.  The copy on the ads is very sweet too.  But this one, speaks to my schoolgirl days when I too, walked to school on leaf-strewn streets.  The scents of those days are so embedded into my psyche that as soon as the calendar turns to September, I go into overdrive with nostalgia and memories, helped along by No. 5.

Also underneath the crunching sidewalks that led to school, were acorns and tiny decomposing apples that mixed with the wafting smoke from rusty barrels of burning leaves and branches.  These marvelous things blended together to create an olfactory soundtrack to fall.

Too, there were high school football games held in the old cement stadium known as Kelliher Field.  The seats were gravestone-cold but the cocoa, in perilously thin paper cups, was so searing hot that we could barely sip it for fear we would scorch our tongues.  But it smelled wonderful and deeply chocolate-y.  And somehow it went better with the fragrant buttery popcorn that assaulted us from the moment we stepped though the field's gates which compelled us to buy small red and white cardboard boxes of it.  Oh and didn't our mothers pull out the meatloaf recipes torn from Ladies Home Journal's and stuffed pork chops with sage again that filled our homes with such rich savory smells?  And cinnamon apple pie, anyone?  Back to perfume...

One golden fall, a friend's mother began to sell Avon.  That was the year I wore Sweet Honesty, Avon's answer to the 70's back-to-nature mania.  I fell for the all-natural look of the packaging which appealed to my personal style at the time:   bell-bottomed jeans and long straight hair shampooed with Herbal Essence.  Sweet Honesty came with me to school in a little roller bottle which I'm sure replaced my summer Strawberry Fields scent that year.  I liked Sweet Honesty for its peppery note that was perfect with fall's burnished colors of smokey gold and magenta.  Like autumn, it was both strong and gentle.

The following year I was away at college.  Still in New England, but housed with young women from all over the country.   And since I wanted to fit in, I wore their uniform fragrance - Revlon's Charlie.  Who can forget Shelley Hack's leggy strut across our Seventeen's centerfold in a chic plaid pantsuit?  Charlie was known as the sexy-young fragrance and "sexy" was not an adjective that graced Seventeen much before then.  It was so new and wearing it, we all felt new - and free and young and sexy...

I began wearing Chanel No. 5 when I was gifted a bottle from a woman who knew my father.  She thought as a young working woman, I might like a sophisticated perfume.  But I wasn't quite ready - it smelled cloyingly sweet to me.  I preferred to find my own fragrances and so for many years, I experimented with Cinnabar, Fracas, and that harlot of a perfume - Opium.  But I never did find one to settle on until I tried No. 5 again.  By then, I had read about Chanel and the origins of her iconic perfume.  Suddenly, it was if I were ready for it.  And it has stayed that way for over 20 years.  I always want a small bottle of  Chanel No. 5 on my dresser top come fall.  It's comforting and oddly reassuring.  Like walking in fallen leaves...

~

What are your favorite fall scents? Please share in comments...

And in keeping with back-to-school style, please read my essay on Rebecca Tuite's marvelous book, Seven Sisters Style:  
http://www.fashionstudiesjournal.org/4-reviews-3b/2017/7/28/seven-sisters-style

My Yellow House

I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after...they've gone through and through me, like wine through water and altered the color of my mind." ~ Emily Bront�, Wuthering Heights

Given my blog-documented love of my hometown, would it surprise you to know that I created alerts on my computer when a house in my old neighborhood goes on the market?  I love to take "tours" into these homes, but alas, they are few and far between because my old hood is not a very transient place.  So I was delighted to find for sale, the petite yellow house that sat kitty-corner to my childhood home.

A variation of Pennsylvania Dutch style, the yellow house is one of three "brides" that were built together in the early years of the 20th century.  They all have small rooms and beautiful wood-paneled walls and lots of charming details, such as inset cabinets and hardwood floors.  While growing up, the little yellow house was occupied by an unmarried and kindly woman named Flora Innes, who walked up our hill every night and past our house, after having been dropped off at the bottom of the street from her wearying factory job.  Flora knew all our names by heart and greeted each of us.  She was a sweet, lovely woman who had suffered childhood polio and walked with a marked limp.

After I took an online spin around the inside of Flora's old house, my daydreams began to ignite.  You see, I am in love with a boy I went to high school who lived not too far away from Flora and from me.  Since I "re-met" this boy many years after first laying eyes on him in 7th grade and long after Flora had been gone, I began to imagine all the what-if's that surprisingly bubbled to the surface since spying Flora's yellow house in my in-box.

What if my love and I had found our relationship back in high school?  What if we had actually married all those years ago?  What if we had bought the yellow house from Flora's relatives when it first hit the market 40 years ago and what if we had a family of our own in the yellow house and what if we had had a long life together?  I even went so far as to imagine myself taking family china out of one of those delightful built-ins and setting the dining room table for Tuesday night dinner with his now diseased parents!  In our house...our little yellow house???

I always believed that the dream of what might have been is the most painful dream to let go.  We watch our fervent wishes slip from outstretched hands like rocks dropped from a bridge that disappear into dark water.  But that is only a tragedy when one has to do an abrupt about face of no choice of their own.  I don't feel the dreams of what-if have a similar power over us.  After all, who's to say that the girl I was 40 years ago was ready for that boy I now love?  Who's to say I would have felt the spell of the little yellow house in the town I was so sure I wanted put in my rear view mirror as quickly as humanly possible?  Time changes us...it grinds us and then polishes us if we are open to its lessons.  Only then can we become whole or at least more of who we were meant to be in the first place.  And then there is love - what of love?  Well...love carries its own timepiece, doesn' it?

My fantasies about the little yellow house resulted in some magically entertaining reveries for driving to work last month but I have since discovered "my" house has been sold to a pair of young newlyweds.  I was told that they have already erected a matching shed in the postage stamp of a backyard, replete with matching shutters and window boxes.  I would have done that first too.  And their parents often come to help.  I just know they are enjoying that marvelous wood dining room with the built-ins, which no doubt are storing some family treasures.  I'm so happy for them and I believe that somewhere, dear Flora Innes is happy too.

As for me, I am now wearing the diamond ring that once belonged to the beloved mother and guest at my imaginary Tuesday night dinners.  And I've learned that any color home can be my yellow one - our view and our reflections are ever-changing.  Like wine poured through water...

On Towels...

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers...~William Wordsworth

A friend came to visit last weekend and loved my blue beach towels.  They are now downstairs, washed and boxed and ready to mail to her doorstep.  I wish it had occurred to me to send them off with her on the day we said goodbye.  Still, I am pleased she will have them soon to cheer her as she wraps herself in one after her morning shower - she loved them so much.

My grandmother thought towels were a big deal.  She talked of Turkish towels and the January White Sales often and I think it was a source of pride for her to have a modest stack of quality towels on hand for loved ones.  My mother also waxed poetic about them but sadly, in our house, towels were often used and abused and left as wet tattered rags on the bathroom floor.  I'm pretty sure she gave up her dream of a neat and tidy linen closet with four active children.  Stacks of colorful fluffy towels would only have served to regularly break her heart.

Nice towels in a good price range are hard to find these days.  There are plenty in rich and famous linen boutiques for those who can manage the price tags that are as lofty as the towels themselves. For me, I scour Home Goods for occasional bounty.  I also suggest department stores when they have their seasonal bedding sales.  A plush affordable towel is a very fine thing.

When I philosophize about them, towels are often overlooked but are one of life's little luxuries.  Thick thirsty towels that are soft and at the ready makes one feel that life is abundant, normal - they are oddly reassuring.  An entire blog post about them does seems a bit silly but the latest world events have hit me hard and I, like many others are groping for the little things that seem unimportant but really do matter.  Like towels, favorite books, iced tea in a clinking tumbler with fresh lemon.  And boxing up a bit of comfort for a good friend.

Soda Fountain Stories

He is clearly smitten with her as she sips from his soda glass.  I love her tartan dress which I imagine to be blue and I'll bet the bow wrapped around her ponytail is black velvet. The moody glow from the lanterns, the tile floor, the leather seat covers make this a charming photo of a 1950's couple on what looks like an innocent first date.  Mom and Pop are most certainly at home in front of the picture window, waiting for their young miss to return by 11 o'clock.  I'm sure she will...

In spring, I like to revisit some of my favorite teenage novels - nearly all set in the 1950's.  I call them Soda Fountain Stories because soda fountains figure so prominently in them.  I can't say it's a trip down Memory Lane because I only know the 50's from pictures, my mother's anecdotes, and novels.  But the heroines' travails seem universal and somehow familiar to the struggles of every decade:  there's the fast crowd who refuses to welcome newcomers, the benevolent and understanding teacher, and of course, a shy bookish late bloomer who doesn't know someone in the wings thinks she's fine.

My books are a comforting trip back in time when good manners were valued and expectations for behavior were cut like glass.  Most important to me though, were the stories' emphasis on home and family.  Nearly every novel has a loving mother who volunteers at church and school, sees that her children and husband eat a good breakfast, and still bakes brownies from scratch...or gingerbread, as one of my favorites tells.  Dad works at the office in the city and comes home tired and put-out but shakes it all down with the help of Mother and her pineapple upside-down cake.  The family dog and kid brother help too.  Oh, if only...

Still, as far removed as 2017 is from the Atomic Age (and all those bomb shelters that were never used), we have it pretty good now too.  Medical care is at nearly science fiction-level, we have the internet and cell phones, movies and books on-demand, and many other magnificent things.  I'm not completely idealizing the purity of the 1950's - I'm just saying that it's some kind of wonderful to escape to a simpler time every now and then when the biggest problem in life is whether the prom dress you made will be as pretty as the illustration on the pattern cover.

Come with me to the suburban 1950's.  Your reboot is ensured.

~

Some favorites:

Wait for Marcy by Rosamund du Jardin -  (Marcy is known as "Squirt", a nickname she detests.)

Sister of the Bride by Beverly Clearly - (Oh how you'll cry!)

Almost April by Zoa Sherburne - (A sudden tragedy which surprisingly aligns with the 21st century too.)

~

And, there is one elusive novel that I have never been able to locate after reading it once in the 8th grade.  It must have been dear to me as the story line has never left me.  A girl's mother is institutionalized and while she is gone from home a beneficent housekeeper takes her place.  But when Mother is well enough to return, our heroine is torn between the warm replacement and the mother she all but forgot.  Does this outline ring a bell with anyone?

Finally, do you have a tender 1950's teenage novel that has remained steadfast in your heart?

Spring Charms

I used to think my modest house took on its beauty only by candlelight.  But that was before I had a new front door installed with a half-moon transom built into the top.  Every morning this past week, as I descended the stairs, I noticed a brief pastoral scene framed in that window, as pretty as if it had been stolen from a colorful illustrated bible.  The window is also responsible for shedding a tender shaft of light on my living room floor that greets me each day as I pad across it to reach my coffee cup.

I've lived in my home almost twenty years now, so it is too steeped in memories to be seen in a detached way.  But I do take it for granted sometimes.  And since I've only just begun to appreciate spring as the lovely season it is, I always thought my house made its grand entrance on Christmas Eve when my tree shines bright along with the white votives I scatter across the bookshelves.  Not anymore...

As well as the new light in the morning, I realize I am truly indebted to the frieze of trees that shelter the front of my house and help keep things quiet around here.  Those elms are not yet in leaf but a coppery aura tell me that they will be green soon.  I learned about that from an old farmer once.  The birches are still blurred with a hazy pistachio-green foliage along with a lot of unnamed plants and bushes.  I don't have a green thumb but I have admire what gardeners choose to plant for maximum spring color.

Something as simple as a newly installed window has caught me off guard and made me want to head outdoors for walks.  But not for exercise - I want to scavenge for presents for the house. I clipped a communal bush for forsythia branches but now they have passed.  Next will be my mother's lilac which I will pilfer for both us.

There's always one moment in the house, when I sense that summer has arrived.  Sometimes it's the heat I feel from the second floor when I open the front door from work -or the unmistakable earth smell from the open bedroom windows.  But I've always ignored spring's visit - it's just been too painful.  Lucky for me, a friend has been showering me with love and holding my hand for the last few springs.  This year, with my new "view" from a simple built-in window that was really just an afterthought, I may be able to manage on my own.  Every season has its gifts.

A Crystalline January

"Your holiday guests have departed and the house at last, is still.  A piano sonata is gently tinkling from the stereo and the fragrance of flowers fills the air.  A fire simmers in the grate... You wander upstairs to draw a soothing scented bath.  A thick towel hangs from the hook next to your soft new robe.  A glass of wine awaits...  At last, the time is nigh for the lady of the house to have her due rest".

~

I wrote those words for an ad I embellished a few years ago.  I like to re-read them on January 1st to remind myself that there is life after the holidays.  And many embellished things to look forward to.

Instead of taking my little Christmas tree down completely, I followed advice from my friend Kay and kept the tree up but only with the white fairy lights on it.  It looks charming and so I spread the word throughout the house that I'm creating a beacon for when the light has a mind to return on its own.  I kept the white tapers on the mantle and strung mini-lights across the hutch's top shelf.  Three stems of white lilies, when opened, will fill the house with the promise of spring.  The frost outside colludes with what is taking place indoors - I want everything to be crystalline.

Even in bleak winter, nature can be breathtakingly beautiful with elements of wonderment not to be missed.  And although January is a wonderful month for hibernating there are still those of us who must brave the elements to get to work each day.  Returning to an incandescent home with whispers of silvery frost can be energizing and may even help with seasonal moods.   With that in mind, I tossed a cream wool throw on my couch for coziness as well as for Netflix-binging and laid out an old tole tray on the kitchen table, chock-full of teas, tea cups and saucers, all nestled on a snowy cloth.  I fluffed my bed after adding an extra layer and splayed white votives about my bedroom like candy. My private rebellion against the dark unforgiving sky above.  Even the bathroom shower curtain got a reboot with the addition of plush coordinating towels I forgot I had, found in the recess of the linen closet when I went on a search and destroy for the humidifier.  Christmas is over but my home is ready for winter, come what may.

A Sister's New Year

For last year's words belong to last year's language;

And next year's words await another voice;

And to make an end is to make a beginning...

T.S. Eliot

~

The new year beckoned all week and finally arrived right on schedule.  My friend Patty, a closet astrologist kept telling me all through December that things would be changing in 2017.  So many people seemed anxious to see the backside of 2016.

Last night I went to a lovely little party given by my sister.  She had a nice smallish crowd and I met some new people.  My sis has had an extremely trying 2016 which began with a frightening health scare and surgeries.  It malingered and then morphed into other issues that left her unbalanced with scars I wasn't sure she would ever recover from.  She's doing great now and it was so nice to see her relaxed and enjoying herself.

New Year's has many myths and superstitions.  I try not to buy into the perceived momentousness of the calendar turn and the resolutions that inevitably follow.  I think if one is motivated to make changes in life, they can do it just as easily on June 1st as January 1st.

But I do believe it is helpful to begin as we intend to proceed and so it was with some surprise as I drove home last night that I began to weep.  I thought of my sister and the expectations she had for her 2016 and how abruptly her dreams crashed.  I thought about her enduring suffering and her constant worries that continued unabated all last year.  But I also remembered the bright moment on Christmas Day when my niece said grace at dinner and how then the entire table raised their glasses to my sister in thanks that she is well.  "To Debbie", we all chanted in unison as eyes brimmed over.  It was an inexpressibly tender moment...

So as I clutched the steering wheel on the dark road just after midnight, I called up my sister.  Through my tears I croaked out, "Happy New Year to you most of all"!  However, the tears were not a portent of things to come - they were merely the first blessing of the new year.  And that is how I intend to proceed.

On the First Day of a Feminine Christmas

This year my Christmas is being brought to me by Seventeen Magazine, or more specifically, the now-vintage Seventeens of my youth.  There is a certain breathless charm about the December issues that are delightfully filled with optimism and expectation.  For the girl who read Seventeen, anything was possible.  She could go to college, she could get a good job, she could make Manwich #53 and snag a cute boyfriend!

The Christmas issues are brimming with cheer and good times.  It is simply expected that a Seventeen girl would enjoy her holidays immensely with family and friends.  She could perhaps even handle a little spirituality.  Editor Enid Haupt's editorial often included non-secular wishes for her readers and heartfelt reminders to honor the true meaning of the holiday - something that I could never imagine in a magazine for today's young women.  Miss Haupt just naturally assumed that the Seventeen reader attended some sort of church and thus, cared deeply about her faith.

The Christmas layouts look like so much fun too, with groups of boys and girls dancing and laughing together.  There is a group camaraderie and a feeling of dating within a circle - trying out members of the opposite sex in an easy-going no-pressure, platonic way.  The ads are more romantic with couples paired off, and enjoying wholesome things such as getting caught in a rainstorm, picnicking together in a meadow, ice skating, or building a snowman.  There was an expectation that youth was prime-time for sorting through feelings, setting goals, playfully learning to be oneself in new and different ways.

There is also a sense that real beauty comes from within but can be helped along by homegrown self-care and pampering.  Seventeen advertised all the tools a Christmas beauty would need to get gorgeous on her own turf - hairdryers and facial steamers to be used right at the kitchen table, manicure kits and electric razors. There's plenty of perfume advertised for readers to give and to ask Santa for: Chanel 5, Ma Griffe, Ambush, Chantilly... The certainty that all girls liked these things is palpable. And whether it was really true or not, it makes me want to play Christmas Beauty Parlor right in the comfort of my own home this season.  Why spend $150 for the latest craze in facials when I can give myself one by following the example set out by Seventeen's engaging and adorable illustrations and artistry?

And the clothes...bright, colorful, feminine and full of cheer.  No little black dresses for our girls - they wear China red, blue velvet, gold, and bright Christmasy tartans.  Long skirts or minis with tights, their clothes still leave something to the imagination too.  But make no mistake:  Seventeen is not all buttoned-up Edwardian frocks - these are dresses with movement and a certain finesse - just minus the grasping-at-you cleavage and poured-in tightness.  The covers don't have celebrities in shivery bare-to-there evening dresses - clothes are refreshingly and gloriously season-appropriate.  You just know it's December inside.  The luminosity from a Seventeen Christmas doesn't come from scary over-blown makeup either (although skin and lips glow from Yardley Pot-O-Gloss and Revlon highlighting blush sticks) - but from the lifestyle the magazine promotes - respect for self, optimism for the future, and permission to revel all of the traditional ideals of the season.

Vintage Seventeen also presents Christmas as a time to give more than receive and there are many pieces about volunteerism and how to shop for special gifts for loved ones while preserving one's energy for the actual holiday.  And when a Seventeen girl is stuck at home during a snowstorm, she plays cards, bakes goodies, reads by the fire, or wraps presents - and she uses her time to help Mother whenever she can.  No idle hours texting or internet-surfing - Seventeen girls are fully-engaged members of the family.

While it's true that there is an orchestrated simplicity to the vintage Seventeen Christmas and the world today is far different and so depraved in many ways.  But I think the Seventeen girl knew that the world would continue to go on being the world and she believed with all her joyous trembling Christmas heart, that despite war and upheaval, there was still a place in it for her.  I believe too.

I Capture the Castle

The title of this post is from the marvelous book by Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle.  The story is dreamy and funny and shimmers like a crystal bowl in a shaft of sun.  A timelessness clings to the pages but it reads as though it were written yesterday afternoon.  Cassandra Mortimer overcomes poverty and dramatic family secrets to come of age in a decrepit old castle that she does indeed, capture.

I especially love the character of Miss Blossom, the ever-present dress form that resides in Cassandra's ramshackle room and to whom she throws her voice when she and her sister, motherless, are in need of consolation and advice.  (I used to do a Miss Blossom bit for my niece Hillary and she still addresses her letters to me with "Dear Miss Blossom"). These days, Miss Blossom is speaking to me as I begin to fall in love with my house all over again...warts and all.  Her voice is soothing and comforting as she says over and over, "all will be well" and "in due time, my dear".  The feelings of being overwhelmed are slowly dissipating.

Of all things, a simple shower curtain has helped too.  I saw it in a window at a local curtain shop.  It has all the botanical beauty I can stand with trailing vines, wandering wisteria and roses - always roses.  I walked by it three times before ducking in to finger it and then order it.  Lucky me to find an old "Miss Blossom friend" working there, from my favorite once-was Laura Ashley shop.  When Judy told me I should have it, my mind pictured my bathroom and I asked if there was a valance for the window too?  And fabric to make a cafe curtain for my vanity?  Oh yes, yes, and yes, I was told.  And a sale price.  I thought of the dresses the Mortimer girls crafted for the dinner party they were invited to that promised to elevate their status with a marriage proposal.

I left the shop with a fabric swatch large enough to hang over the rod. But the funny thing is, this scrap of fabric had me taking my floral plates off the wall and cleaning them, rearranging my potions and lotions and generally tidying up while I wait for my new things.  When I was done there, I finally opened the door and took a gimlet eye to the bedroom my daughter recently vacated.  What will this space actually be?  With (floral) notebook and pen in hand, I set to work scribbling a list of furnishings and belongings I would move into the room:  style books, my desk, a sleeper love seat, television and cabinet, baskets for files.  The closet will hold off-season clothing and hats.  I had a plan after flailing about for a few weeks and nearly purchasing another place to begin all over with.

But this house has tender memories, creature comforts, and a certain charm I wasn't able to find in the other one.  I have a comfortable and beautiful terrace that abuts a wooded grove with hidden ferny grottoes.  The property lines are encircled by an ancient stone wall most like built by the Native Americans who lived in this spot centuries ago. The sea is over the tree tops from my second story windows.  Yes, there is work to be done including painting which I hate.  But little by little, twig by twig, I will tend to it all.  I am a one-woman show but I will ask for help, hire when necessary, and stick to my plan.  I WILL capture this place.  A wise woman once told me that intention becomes reality.  Now it wasn't Miss Blossom who said that - but it sure could have been.

~

"I can't dance or sing but I can turn a house into a living, breathing thing".

(Paraphrased quote that I cannot recall the source of, but I love it!)

At Home with Madam Chic

This is the perfect picture for Mother's Day.  And it charmingly touches upon my infatuation with ballet as Mother is wearing toe shoes.  I assume the silky pink footwear illustrates that she is executing arabesques in her daily round which includes washing hose and darning argyle socks.

These days I am not at home much and I miss it terribly.  There is no time right now to plant cheery annuals in containers for the terrace or make blueberry crumble, my favorite springtime dessert.  And not much time for reading either.  When I can dip into a book, it is late at night and only for a few moments.  More often than not, I am reaching for Jennifer L. Scott's book, At Home with Madam Chic.

Although I don't know Jennifer, she did ask me to review the galley of At Home with Madam Chic before the book was published last fall but I wasn't able to pick it up in earnest until now.  It is providing me with soothing inspirational bedtime reading - like a comforting lullaby.  Jennifer is much younger than I, but she writes with a refreshing wisdom beyond her years - I like her very much.  I am guessing that when she isn't giving TED talks and conducting book signings, she lives a quiet life that includes homecaring in the tradition of the French family she resided with during her Paris study years - the ones with Madam Chic at the helm.  I love the tips in her book about meal planning and firing up the slow cooker, her recipes, and accompanying music recommendations.  It all makes being at home seem so tranquil to me as I run hither and yon and beyond. 

Jennifer's solution for troubles is to find inner peace in the inner sanctum of home doing a myriad of ordinary daily tasks - like washing windows and organizing drawers and cupboards.  She urges us to create a pause in the middle of our at-home-days to include a warming cup of tea and she tells us that orchids are really elegant flowers to cultivate for the house.

I wish I had time for plants and cookery but to every time there is a season and this is my season to be busy outside the house.  But it doesn't mean I don't long to be like Madam Chic, and have fresh flowers, symphonic music, and an organized junk drawer.  For now, I will look for contentment in Jennifer's gentle guidance and advice about living a chic and happy life at home.

Fatherly Advice

Poetry sometimes throws light into the darker corners of existence.  It offers truths that are based on intuition, keen eyes, and soulful experiences. Just like good advice.  Some days when my thoughts have no safe place to rest, I turn to the words of Andrew Stuart, father to Jane, in Lucy Maud Montgomery's wonderful novel, Jane of Lantern Hill.

When I read Lantern Hill, I hear Mr. Stuart's words spoken by the gravelly voiced Sam Waterston, the actor who played him in the 1990 film of the book.  His voice has a deep resonating element that cheers me, comforts me.  But what I really need is Mr. Stuart's between-the-words wisdom and guidance for good plain living.  And because L.M. Montgomery's stories are so rooted in nature, his advice is spiritual as well as tranquilizing.  Let's see if he can make you feel better too.

"It is the essence of adventure to see the break of a new day, Jane.  What may it not be ushering in?  An empire may fall today...a baby may be born who will discover a cure for cancer...a wonderful poem may be written". 

"When the little moments torture you, Jane, think of the truth and the truth shall make you free...that is the most tremendous saying in the world Jane...because we are all afraid of the truth...and afraid of freedom that the truth will bring you".

"Be sure to have a patch of excitement most every week".

"The most awful and the most beautiful things in the world can be said in three words or less...he is gone...he is come...I love you...it's too late.  Life is illuminated or ruined in words Jane.  And yet, when a poet praises a woman, she becomes immortal".

"Don't let others blow your candles out".

"Watch the stars whenever you are worried Jane.  They will steady you...comfort you...balance you".

"Jane, always remember that death can never fence out love".

~

Father does know best sometimes.

The Lovely Long Ago

As pretty as it is, this illustration instantly brought stinging tears to my eyes.  My daughter used to meet me at the door every night, our cat Buddy in her arms.  And surely you know by now that my daughter, my girl, my now grown-up compatriot, is to be married and will be leaving home.  It also seems quite possible that she will be moving to another time zone.  We are both trying to get use to that idea.

When she was six, I heard a country song on the radio one day.  I only recall one line of lyrics and that's plenty because the song is about a daughter leaving home.  "She'll take the picture in the hall", I think.  When my daughter was six, removing pictures from walls seemed far, far away.  Now, it is nigh upon us.

This week, a thousand echoes filled this house - memories in bits and pieces.  I even thought I smelled baby powder one morning and it nearly took my breath away.  A dear friend suggested I lean into my pain and so I did.  I cried.  And cried some more.

People are always telling me how wonderful my daughter is, how lovely and sweet she is, what a gifted teacher she is.  I don't feel I can take too much credit - I had excellent raw material.  She was born good.  And except for a brief period when she was four and I thought she might be possessed, she never gave me any trouble.

I'm done contemplating the lovely long ago, at least for now.  But I know I will be compelled to visit there again.  When I'm ready, I need only follow the whispering come-hither of baby powder.

My Girl

 

Refined Living

 

This Tasha Tudor illustration is from Amy's Goose, a sweet book by Tasha's daughter, Efner Tudor Holmes.  It is only a slight exaggeration to say that it changed my life.  When my child was a mere toddler with a newly minted single mother,  I bought the book because I was captivated by this portrait of a small family having dinner together by candlelight.  I fantasized that the husband and wife, and the little girl Amy, took all their evening meals as a threesome at this elegant yet cozy table. But it is not an exaggeration to say the illustration made me sad too.  And like a wound that hurts only when touched, I rubbed it often.

 

Soon I became obsessed with dinner scenes in children's books and found many of them.  I looked for mealtimes in films too and studied the china, the cutlery, the flowers and food.  I didn't know at the time, but a shift was taking place - I was crafting a new way of life for myself and my little child.  When we moved from our big country house to a tiny city apartment, I went furniture shopping.  The moment I spied a beautiful smaller dining table, my fingers ran across the fine oak and I heard myself murmur, "This feels like home", even though I wasn't yet sure what home really looked like.

 

When the table was delivered to the apartment I scurried off for my daughter's antique high chair and discovered it tucked neatly up to the table.  A few days later, I bought some lovely quilted placemats and cloth napkins.  I polished the silver candlesticks that were a wedding present for a marriage that abruptly ended but once on the table with simple beeswax candles, I knew my daughter and I would be a family, just a different version.  Encouraged by Tasha, my vision helped me find the time, despite a working mother's exhaustion, to create healthy meals too.  It wasn't always easy...single parenting is grindingly hard sometimes, but soon I began to feel whole again.  Capable.  Strong. 

 

Wonderful tablescapes and meals can be spotted wherever you look for them:  literature, picture books, magazines, etc.  It's really about refined living - table manners, good food, conversation, candlelight, sharing.  The other evening, my daughter came home after being away for ten days.  And since I am acutely aware that she will no longer live here after her wedding, I laid out the linens, placed the candles and a flowering plant and made a small meal.  We ate together at our family table in the fading light of a crisp early spring night.  We could have ordered pizza and ate in front of the TV or grabbed a snack and ate in front our personal computers.  But I wouldn't have seen her face as she excitedly described her art museum visit or her delight as she relayed all the airport observations she collects just for me.  Refined living, inspired by a child's book, from long ago.

 

Great refined dinner on film:  Mrs. Miniver, House of Elliot, Enchanted April, Out of Africa -  where people are civilized, eat continental style and one can hear clinking glasses and the gentle sound of cutlery against  china.  And of course, conversation...and laughter.