All Decked Out...

Both my mother and grandmother wore one of these, the ever-popular, artificial, Christmas corsage! They wore them on their "good" coats, the ones they wore "for best". Sometime after Thanksgiving I remember the corsages returning from dresser drawers where they had hidden away all year, and reappearing on lapels, that's when I knew that Christmas wasn't far away. I have a vivid memory of my mother coming home from a long-ago Christmas party, she tip-toed into the bedroom where my sister and I slept, to kiss us goodnight. We'd had a baby sitter that evening, a rare event, so it must have been a very important occasion! When Mom bent down over me I recall damp snowflakes clinging to her coat and catching the lingering scent of Emeraude. She turned to my sister's bed and I caught the tiny flash of her corsage reflecting light from the overhead lamp in the hallway just outside our bedroom, I heard a very faint tinkle from the little bell that was attached, as she bent down one more time over my sleeping sister. I snuggled down even deeper under the covers then, and smiled, before I fell back to sleep; all was right with the world, my parents were home again and Christmas was coming!

Life is Good!