Considering the Lilies, and Meddye’s Mettle
A few mornings ago, after deciding which bills had to be paid now and which ones could wait till the next paycheck, I posted my Facebook status as “considering the lilies.” Immediately, one friend replied, “they toil not, neither do they spin” and another responded with a YouTube video of the beautiful British actress Lillie Langtry (1853-1929).
As I pondered my own situation, I thought about my godmother, Meddye Willis (born Aug. 5, 1891), just as elegant, though not as scandalous, as Lillie Langtry. Her life wasn’t always easy, but I never saw her spin and toil. She was a gracious lady not just in the eyes of the Gracious Ladies of Georgia committee who named her an official one of them in 1983, but in the eyes of all of us in Lower Russell County who looked up to her and depended on her.
After her legs were injured badly in a wreck – thanks to her penchant for multi-tasking, she had a few of those -- she wore long skirts and Victorian blouses with high necks; her hair was always pinned up and her face was always “made.” In appearance, she reminded me of Charles Dickens’ Miss Haversham. Dressed in her matriarchal finery, she ran Jernigan Methodist Church from a chair at her big cluttered desk in the large sunroom of her lovely home. No matter how little money there was in the church bank account, she always managed to raise enough donations to keep Jernigan Methodist up and running, though it had only a dozen living members. She never let a little thing like lack of funding hold her down or close the church.
I don’t know much about her early life. Mama tells me she was born in Oklahoma, Meddye Tipton. At some point, she came from Texas to Columbus in a wagon and ended up in what used to be Hog Island or Loftin, Alabama, an area between Cottonton and Fort Mitchell. She had the resolution of a ninja. Mama laughs about a younger Meddye moving an R.C. Cola truck out of the parking space she wanted one day when they were in Columbus. Apparently, the truck had parked in the space Meddye usually used, so she got out of her car, climbed up into the R.C. truck and moved it, freeing her parking space. That was typical Meddye.
She was married to Otis Alonza Willis, called “Cap’n Otis” by everyone who knew him. Apparently, he inherited the house and land they lived on from his family. Being young, I never thought to ask about their pasts. What mattered to me as a child was that he always snuck me chewing gum at church, and that he got in trouble sometimes with Meddye for reading the newspaper and eating peanuts during the preacher’s sermon. Even though he died when I was still quite young, I remember his white, white hair. For a time, Meddye taught school and also had a country grocery store on the dirt road behind their house. She was a self-taught businesswoman: Daddy remembers her taking “a bunch of collard greens and an old rooster named Buddy” as collateral for some money she loaned somebody. She did just fine without an MBA.
When twelve-year-old best friends, Lynne and I, joined Jernigan Methodist Church, she stood between us with an arm around each of us. At that awkward age, we had a tendency to be silly and to find everything around us funny. That day was no different. But once Meddy got her arms around us, if we so much as looked at each other or seemed tempted to giggle or take lightly what we were entering into, she bore her fingers into us in that tender area under our arms. After the ceremony, she gave us each a gift -- to keep safe in our Hope Chests till our honeymoons, she said. She handed us lacey pillowcases, along with instructions on how we were to dress in beautiful negligees and fix our hair while waiting for our grooms to come out of the bathroom after our weddings. When she called them ‘virgin pillowcases,” we were both dumbstruck. Something finally overwhelmed us enough to make us behave for the rest of the day, although we whispered and giggled hysterically later about those unexpected pillowcases.
Meddye’s house, originally a log house, was the prettiest house I have ever seen, every room of it. Yet nothing in it was particularly expensive, nothing ostentatious, nothing from a “matched set.” Her kitchen was pink. Her sunroom was filled with plants, palms, ferns, and vines that trailed along and around windows and walls. Her dining room was formal, and when she set the long shiny dining room table, it was with fine china and silver, but what made it outstanding was that though each element on the table was fine, nothing matched. She set each place with a different china pattern, and used different silver patterns at each place setting. Everything complemented everything else. In her bedrooms, the stuffed chairs had little pleated skirts, as did the dressing tables. Nothing was “pre-coordinated,” but everything was pretty. The pictures on the walls in her hall were originals – painted by Meddye herself. Her daughter Mildred gave me one of them after her mother died. It hangs in my own sunroom now as do two china plates, the only two remaining pieces of her china that came with her from Texas in the wagon. She asked me when I married what gift I would like from her, and I asked for something that was hers, nothing bought. She gave me the plates.
Meddye simplified things. Once when I complained in Sunday school that the Bible was confusing to me, she told me, “for now, just read what’s in red then.” She didn’t get bogged down. She always named her dogs “Peggy” or “Cindy.” She mastered life. It didn’t get the best of her, regardless of circumstances. Even her advice was simple and easy to follow, such as “always choose a chair to sit on that complements your outfit.” I long ago forgot Boyle’s Law and what Pi stands for but I still scan the upholstery upon entering a room before I take a seat.
When she was in her 90s, she said that one of the advantages of getting old was that the young men could kiss her now without their wives getting jealous. And kiss her they did! At her request, we sang “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” at her funeral.
So I considered the lilies of the field and I remembered Meddye and her fortitude, and I got up to meet the day.
Copyright: Marian Carcache November 5, 2009
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Bottles
When I was a little girl, I loved empty bottles: medicine bottles, wine bottles, perfume bottles, even broken bottles. Each spring my family planted a garden in the back of a vacant yard where Miss Annie Cunningham’s house had once stood. Miss Annie must have had an epic garbage dump on the spot where we planted our garden because year after year that newly plowed plot was a treasure trove of bottles and jars.
In addition to digging for buried treasures, I also begged older relatives to save their empty medicine bottles for me. Even the customers at Daddy’s store knew to save me their cobalt blue Milk of Magnesia, Vick’s Salve, and Noxzema bottles and jars.
When I was a little more sophisticated, I discovered that many ladies – such as my Aunt Lillian and my great Aunt Evelyn - would give me their beautiful empty perfume bottles. My own mama didn’t wear make-up or perfume, so a whole new world opened up to me the first time I took the glass stopper from an empty Chanel No. 5 bottle and smelled the lingering scent. (Jungle Gardenia by Tuvache didn’t seduce me till later, but I remember the exact moment -- I was fourteen -- that I picked up a sample sheet saturated in the luscious smell of gardenias while standing at the counter at the Rexall waiting for a vanilla coke.)
Last week, more than fifty years since I first smelled Chanel No. 5, I came across an Internet blog on which someone asked if “anybody out there” knew the recipe for Chanel No. 5. About five bloggers wrote back to the effect that the girl who asked the question must be stupid if she thought that information was available. They said she might as well ask the formula for Coca-Cola or KFC. Of course, I found the blog in the first place because I was looking for the recipe for Chanel No. 5, so I was grateful that a courtly sort named Starbuck modestly answered her with this simple message:
Top Notes: Aldehyde’s, grasse jasmine, neroli
Heart Notes: rose, ylang-ylang, iris, and lily of the valley
Base Notes: amber, patchouli, vanilla
A gentleman with real information instead of a smart Alec with a comeback is something to value, as is a wonderful scent. The Chanel No. 5 web page confirms that Starbuck was correct. It describes the scent this way:
“ Launches with bewitching notes of Ylang-Ylang and Neroli, then unfolds with Grasse Jasmine and May Rose. Sandalwood and Vanilla round out the fabled composition with unforgettable woody notes.”
Reading that recipe I realize that over the years my favorite fragrances -- ylang-ylang, patchouli, amber, neroli, and even vanilla -- were most likely influenced by that first empty bottle of Chanel No. 5 that Aunt Lillian or Aunt Evelyn gave me for my bottle collection, that my interest today in scents and essential oils probably started there, too. Those vessels weren’t empty after all.
copyright: Marian Carcache, 2010
When I was a little girl, I loved empty bottles: medicine bottles, wine bottles, perfume bottles, even broken bottles. Each spring my family planted a garden in the back of a vacant yard where Miss Annie Cunningham’s house had once stood. Miss Annie must have had an epic garbage dump on the spot where we planted our garden because year after year that newly plowed plot was a treasure trove of bottles and jars.
In addition to digging for buried treasures, I also begged older relatives to save their empty medicine bottles for me. Even the customers at Daddy’s store knew to save me their cobalt blue Milk of Magnesia, Vick’s Salve, and Noxzema bottles and jars.
When I was a little more sophisticated, I discovered that many ladies – such as my Aunt Lillian and my great Aunt Evelyn - would give me their beautiful empty perfume bottles. My own mama didn’t wear make-up or perfume, so a whole new world opened up to me the first time I took the glass stopper from an empty Chanel No. 5 bottle and smelled the lingering scent. (Jungle Gardenia by Tuvache didn’t seduce me till later, but I remember the exact moment -- I was fourteen -- that I picked up a sample sheet saturated in the luscious smell of gardenias while standing at the counter at the Rexall waiting for a vanilla coke.)
Last week, more than fifty years since I first smelled Chanel No. 5, I came across an Internet blog on which someone asked if “anybody out there” knew the recipe for Chanel No. 5. About five bloggers wrote back to the effect that the girl who asked the question must be stupid if she thought that information was available. They said she might as well ask the formula for Coca-Cola or KFC. Of course, I found the blog in the first place because I was looking for the recipe for Chanel No. 5, so I was grateful that a courtly sort named Starbuck modestly answered her with this simple message:
Top Notes: Aldehyde’s, grasse jasmine, neroli
Heart Notes: rose, ylang-ylang, iris, and lily of the valley
Base Notes: amber, patchouli, vanilla
A gentleman with real information instead of a smart Alec with a comeback is something to value, as is a wonderful scent. The Chanel No. 5 web page confirms that Starbuck was correct. It describes the scent this way:
“ Launches with bewitching notes of Ylang-Ylang and Neroli, then unfolds with Grasse Jasmine and May Rose. Sandalwood and Vanilla round out the fabled composition with unforgettable woody notes.”
Reading that recipe I realize that over the years my favorite fragrances -- ylang-ylang, patchouli, amber, neroli, and even vanilla -- were most likely influenced by that first empty bottle of Chanel No. 5 that Aunt Lillian or Aunt Evelyn gave me for my bottle collection, that my interest today in scents and essential oils probably started there, too. Those vessels weren’t empty after all.
copyright: Marian Carcache, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Signs and Wonders
The year that I was ten, the world was predicted to blow to bits. That summer outlines of crosses mysteriously appeared in Pentecostal church windows, and one Sunday night Frances, the only babysitter my mama had ever left me with, disappeared. Little Willie, the child who lived with Frances, came for Daddy after midnight, scared and crying because Frances hadn’t come home from fishing that afternoon. Mama got me out of bed, and she and Daddy and Willie and I got in the Scout and drove through the woods and fields looking for Frances and calling her name. Willie showed Daddy Frances’ favorite fishing spot and Daddy drove right down to the river calling her, his voice echoing back from the Georgia side of the Chattahoochee. From the back window of the Scout, I could see the reflection of the moon on the river. It seemed to be going crazy on the ripples, and even though the Scout was standing still, we seemed to be moving with the moon as it floated down the river toward daylight. Willie started crying when we didn’t find Frances, and I wanted to cry, too, but I remembered Jackie Kennedy saying to John Jr., “Kennedys don’t cry,” when the President was shot and, even though Mama had no use for the Kennedys, I admired them, so I held back tears and put my hand on Willie in an effort to absorb some of his sadness.
The next morning Daddy and the sheriff’s deputies found Frances’ dress neatly folded on an embankment above the river, her shoes placed side by side next to the dress. I could tell by the look on Daddy’s face that it was not a good sign. That afternoon her drowned body was dragged up from the Chattahoochee by her slip strap.
There was lots of talk around Daddy’s store as the word traveled that Frances was dead. Some folks said Frances must have fallen into the river. Others believed that a jealous woman had worked roots against her, and still others said somebody had put a powder in her shoes that made her go crazy. I thought about Frances singing to me as I fought sleep at night. I thought about Mama’s hand-painted enamel tray that I ruined making peanut butter cookies one afternoon. I put the tray in the oven, using it as a cookie sheet, and caused the enamel to buckle. The tray was ruined and the cookies were, too, but Frances defended me, told Mama it was an accident and not to make me feel worse about it. The stories of her being crazy didn’t sound a thing like the Frances I had known, not the one who rocked me to sleep and sang hymns to me even after I was big enough that my feet nearly touched the floor when I sat in her lap.
All of her relatives who had moved away came home for the funeral. Mama and I dressed up and attended. It was hot in the church, but pretty cardboard fans with pictures of Jesus in the Garden stirred up the sweet smells of cologne and dusting powder. When the preacher started his sermon from behind the pulpit, for the first time in my churchgoing history, I listened. His voice was electrifying. His words and rhythm were poetry -- nothing like the monotone sermons I had heard growing up a mainstream protestant. Listening to the Reverend was like listening to something older even than music. I was mesmerized. Mama and I were considered “visitors” at the funeral and were treated like guests of honor. We were invited to lead the line of friends and relatives who filed by the casket to pay respects. I had never seen a dead person before, and held tightly to Mama’s hand as I said goodbye to Frances in her best Sunday dress.
That night as I started off to sleep to the lull of the attic fan, I thought about people saying Frances might have been crazy. I remembered the sheriff from Phenix City asking Daddy if we put something in the water in lower Russell County that caused so much craziness to go on all the time. I wondered who decided what got called “crazy” and what got called “sane.”
One night before the summer was over, Daddy and Mama and Roy and Janie took Lynne, Mitch, and me to see the crosses that had appeared in the church windows. The adults tried to find a logical explanation for their appearance while the children reveled in the wonder of it all. A few weeks later, Willie was sent away to live in Atlanta with relatives he didn’t even know. School was about to start. Summer was nearly over.
The moon turned blood red and disappeared one night in late August, but the world didn’t end that summer or the next. It just kept turning. Now forty years have passed during which I have witnessed a lot of wonder and a number of miracles, too; but none has edified me more than something Daddy showed me when I visited home recently. Little Willie, now, of course, a grown man, had sent Daddy a tape of him preaching the gospel. Willie has become a preacher up in Atlanta, as full of poetry and electricity and charisma as the Reverend who preached Frances’ funeral so many years ago. I feel honored to have been there that night four decades back to share his sadness as we rode through the fields in the back of the Scout watching the moon watching us.
Copyright 2009, Marian Carcache
The next morning Daddy and the sheriff’s deputies found Frances’ dress neatly folded on an embankment above the river, her shoes placed side by side next to the dress. I could tell by the look on Daddy’s face that it was not a good sign. That afternoon her drowned body was dragged up from the Chattahoochee by her slip strap.
There was lots of talk around Daddy’s store as the word traveled that Frances was dead. Some folks said Frances must have fallen into the river. Others believed that a jealous woman had worked roots against her, and still others said somebody had put a powder in her shoes that made her go crazy. I thought about Frances singing to me as I fought sleep at night. I thought about Mama’s hand-painted enamel tray that I ruined making peanut butter cookies one afternoon. I put the tray in the oven, using it as a cookie sheet, and caused the enamel to buckle. The tray was ruined and the cookies were, too, but Frances defended me, told Mama it was an accident and not to make me feel worse about it. The stories of her being crazy didn’t sound a thing like the Frances I had known, not the one who rocked me to sleep and sang hymns to me even after I was big enough that my feet nearly touched the floor when I sat in her lap.
All of her relatives who had moved away came home for the funeral. Mama and I dressed up and attended. It was hot in the church, but pretty cardboard fans with pictures of Jesus in the Garden stirred up the sweet smells of cologne and dusting powder. When the preacher started his sermon from behind the pulpit, for the first time in my churchgoing history, I listened. His voice was electrifying. His words and rhythm were poetry -- nothing like the monotone sermons I had heard growing up a mainstream protestant. Listening to the Reverend was like listening to something older even than music. I was mesmerized. Mama and I were considered “visitors” at the funeral and were treated like guests of honor. We were invited to lead the line of friends and relatives who filed by the casket to pay respects. I had never seen a dead person before, and held tightly to Mama’s hand as I said goodbye to Frances in her best Sunday dress.
That night as I started off to sleep to the lull of the attic fan, I thought about people saying Frances might have been crazy. I remembered the sheriff from Phenix City asking Daddy if we put something in the water in lower Russell County that caused so much craziness to go on all the time. I wondered who decided what got called “crazy” and what got called “sane.”
One night before the summer was over, Daddy and Mama and Roy and Janie took Lynne, Mitch, and me to see the crosses that had appeared in the church windows. The adults tried to find a logical explanation for their appearance while the children reveled in the wonder of it all. A few weeks later, Willie was sent away to live in Atlanta with relatives he didn’t even know. School was about to start. Summer was nearly over.
The moon turned blood red and disappeared one night in late August, but the world didn’t end that summer or the next. It just kept turning. Now forty years have passed during which I have witnessed a lot of wonder and a number of miracles, too; but none has edified me more than something Daddy showed me when I visited home recently. Little Willie, now, of course, a grown man, had sent Daddy a tape of him preaching the gospel. Willie has become a preacher up in Atlanta, as full of poetry and electricity and charisma as the Reverend who preached Frances’ funeral so many years ago. I feel honored to have been there that night four decades back to share his sadness as we rode through the fields in the back of the Scout watching the moon watching us.
Copyright 2009, Marian Carcache
Monday, January 4, 2010
Camelot, Alabama
Camelot in Lower Russell County Alabama
One of my friends tells me that when we start talking about the past, it means we don’t have much going on in the present and don’t expect much from the future. Gosh, I hope that’s not true because I sure seem to be reminiscing a lot lately.
The fifties for me are a blur of “Roy Rogers,” “Sky King,” “Lassie,” “I Love Lucy,” and Elvis coming home from the Army. But oh! the sixties!
In the 1960s JFK was in the White House and from 1961-1963 our country experienced a period of optimism that his widow later referred to as an “American Camelot.” That very special decade was larger than life. I haven’t seen another like it in forty years.
Barbie had made her debut in 1959, the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan show in 1964, and soon after that, the Kraft Paper Company built a mill within a few miles of my parents’ store bringing all sorts of changes to our rather isolated, insulated lives. We even got a caution light in the Cottonton-Jernigan metroplex. It was the best of times for three young girls who were on the cusp between outgrowing their Barbie dolls and Nancy Drew books, and still secretly wanting to indulge in “childish things.” Lynne, Joan, and I were not quite old enough yet to navigate our own lives, though we were still young enough to celebrate them.
My two best friends and I “married” the Beatles and drank Pomac soda, a strange foreign blend of what tasted like fermented fruit that the Dr. Pepper Company distributed for awhile. We pretended it was champagne at our wedding receptions on Mama’s patio between the two ivy-covered Mulberry trees as we clinked the wine glasses we had snuck outside for the special occasion. A year or so earlier, we had “married” the Cartwright brothers and we remained very fond of Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe, but when we saw the Beatles we traded our cowgirl boots for go-go boots in a heartbeat.
During the time that the paper mill was under construction, Daddy rented living space to construction workers who had come to work in Russell County from as far away as California and Oregon. Sometimes, especially during the summer, some of the married men brought their families to stay with them for a week or two and, in doing so, doubled my playmate pool. A couple of times I got drafted to play “Hell Is For Heroes” or “Combat” with someone’s visiting son in exchange for him memorizing some lines from To Kill A Mockingbird so he could be Jem to my Scout. Joan’s mother turned their huge old family home into a boarding house during that period of time and cooked home-style meals every night for their renters. One day when Joan and I were straightening the rooms for her mother, we discovered certain magazines in one of the men’s room, but we never told her mother who didn’t drink, smoke, or swear (except the one time that we heard her mutter “hell’s bells” when she got outdone with Joan’s daddy). Those magazines were mild compared to what we now see on billboards, not to even mention the Internet, but we were so full of secret over that discovery that we nearly popped.
Lynne had started the“Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Family Prayer Group.” She, Joan, and I were the sole members. She made her family’s living room closet into a small prayer closet for us to meet in, and decorated it with glow-in-the-dark crosses, pictures of Jesus, and copies of Dale Evans’s inspirational books. I don’t remember whether Joan and I confessed to finding those magazines at the next prayer meeting or not, but hindsight tells me we might have kept quiet.
.
Life threw us curves over the years: Joan’s daddy died, Lynne’s family’s house burned. Soon were going to different schools, and then we were off to college. Marriages were interrupted by death and divorce, and beautiful children were born. Suddenly, it is 2010 and Lynne and Joan and I have all done some navigating, sometimes with faulty compasses, perhaps. But thankfully, we are still celebrating this wonderfully rich pageant that is life.
Copyright, Marian Carcache 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Batman, Jesus, and the Addams Family
My son’s first word was Batman.
Thrilled that he had said his first word, I immediately bought him a 12” Batman toy from the novelty section of Gateway Books where we used to hang out a lot. He carried that toy with him everywhere. Our dog Frank who, like Batman, had a black “mask,” chewed Batman’s bat ears off, but John-David still carried the toy with him all the time, even after the cape was lost and head had gaping holes where the ears had been.
Soon after his first word came his first full sentence: “Let’s collect them all.” He learned this sentence by asking me to read the backs of the blister cards that D.C. Comics action figures came on. Indeed, we began to collect them all.
An only-child, John-David preferred activities he could do by himself, such as arranging his action figures into “set-ups” as he called them. Sometimes other odd characters got mixed in with a collection. For example, there was a plaster figure of the Virgin Mary, the same scale as the D.C. Comics action figures. Sometimes she joined the other “superheroes” on adventures. While cooking supper one evening, I heard him talking for his figures in the next room and looked in to find the Virgin Mary begging Joker not to hurt her baby. About that time Batman flew in, knocked Joker off the coffee table, and the Virgin Mary sighed and said, “thanks Batman.” My mother did not find this story funny when I told her about it on the phone later that night. She thought it was “sacrilege”.
So I decided not to tell her a few months later when the Addams Family showed up at the stable to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
The Christmas that he was four, our dear friend Katharine, who had moved to Florida to be nearer to her daughter and her own grandchildren, sent John-David a nativity scene made of fabric: there was a quilted stable with a door that opened and closed with velcro and was filled with the members of the Holy Family. There were Wise Men, a shepherd, a camel, and a sheep. And a button was sewn into the star on top of the stable that, when pressed, played “Away In A Manger.” He loved the gift, just as I had always loved the presents Katharine had sent me when I was a child.
Naturally, as soon as he opened the package, he got busy making a Nativity “set-up” under our Christmas tree. The fabric Mary stood at one end of the fabric manger with Joseph by her side. The quilted animals and Wise Men looked on. But at the other end of the manger stood a 5” plastic Morticia Addams with the charming mustachioed Gomez by her side.
I did not see a little boy’s innocent gestures as sacrilege. I preferred to remember the scripture that tells us “a little child shall lead them” and to understand the expansive, not exclusive, nature of God and his grace. But unless she reads this piece, Mama won’t know about the time Morticia joined the Holy Family.
Copyright Marian Carcache,2009
Thrilled that he had said his first word, I immediately bought him a 12” Batman toy from the novelty section of Gateway Books where we used to hang out a lot. He carried that toy with him everywhere. Our dog Frank who, like Batman, had a black “mask,” chewed Batman’s bat ears off, but John-David still carried the toy with him all the time, even after the cape was lost and head had gaping holes where the ears had been.
Soon after his first word came his first full sentence: “Let’s collect them all.” He learned this sentence by asking me to read the backs of the blister cards that D.C. Comics action figures came on. Indeed, we began to collect them all.
An only-child, John-David preferred activities he could do by himself, such as arranging his action figures into “set-ups” as he called them. Sometimes other odd characters got mixed in with a collection. For example, there was a plaster figure of the Virgin Mary, the same scale as the D.C. Comics action figures. Sometimes she joined the other “superheroes” on adventures. While cooking supper one evening, I heard him talking for his figures in the next room and looked in to find the Virgin Mary begging Joker not to hurt her baby. About that time Batman flew in, knocked Joker off the coffee table, and the Virgin Mary sighed and said, “thanks Batman.” My mother did not find this story funny when I told her about it on the phone later that night. She thought it was “sacrilege”.
So I decided not to tell her a few months later when the Addams Family showed up at the stable to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
The Christmas that he was four, our dear friend Katharine, who had moved to Florida to be nearer to her daughter and her own grandchildren, sent John-David a nativity scene made of fabric: there was a quilted stable with a door that opened and closed with velcro and was filled with the members of the Holy Family. There were Wise Men, a shepherd, a camel, and a sheep. And a button was sewn into the star on top of the stable that, when pressed, played “Away In A Manger.” He loved the gift, just as I had always loved the presents Katharine had sent me when I was a child.
Naturally, as soon as he opened the package, he got busy making a Nativity “set-up” under our Christmas tree. The fabric Mary stood at one end of the fabric manger with Joseph by her side. The quilted animals and Wise Men looked on. But at the other end of the manger stood a 5” plastic Morticia Addams with the charming mustachioed Gomez by her side.
I did not see a little boy’s innocent gestures as sacrilege. I preferred to remember the scripture that tells us “a little child shall lead them” and to understand the expansive, not exclusive, nature of God and his grace. But unless she reads this piece, Mama won’t know about the time Morticia joined the Holy Family.
Copyright Marian Carcache,2009
Parfumes and Epiphanies
As a new year begins in which I will turn 56 years old, I realize something I have never known about myself. I have never thought of myself as a person who cares much for cosmetic counter perfumes. Many of them change scent on me. Most make me sneeze. Since Patchouli days, I have preferred essential oils. But a series of events over the last days of 2009 has caused me to rethink my history with perfumes.
On New Year’s Eve night, my friends Bob and Gail Langley picked me up to ride with them to Jimmy and Joanne Camp’s party. The second I got in the car, Gail asked if I smelled her. I answered, “why, yes, but I thought it was my lapel.”
New Year’s Eve is also Bob and Gail’s 26th wedding anniversary and Gail had asked for a bottle of J’Adore Perfume by Christian Dior, a “radiant, sensual, sophisticated … fragrance that celebrates the renaissance of extreme femininity and the power of spontaneous emotion with a brilliant bouquet of orchids, the velvet touch of Damascus plum, and the mellowness of amaranth wood.” Gail continues to surprise me. I never pegged her as a girl who would ask for perfume, but she sure did smell good.
Just as Gail surprised me in asking for perfume as an anniversary gift --she and Bob had exchanged cremations for Christmas after all -- I surprise myself in realizing that the luxury I have indulged in during my Christmas break from teaching has been to stop in at the mall several times a week to spray myself with Chanel No. 5, alternating of course between the tester at Dillard’s and the one at Belk. I cannot in good conscience pay nearly $100 for a bottle of perfume when there are homeless creatures in the world who need money more than the Chanel empire does, but for some reason, it has given me comfort this Christmas season to smell that scent that so many women from my childhood wore.
I’ve written before about my early “love affair” with Jungle Gardenia by Tuvache. How melodic even its formulas is: “top notes of sage, clary oil, bitter orange oil, cyclamen, heliotrope. Middle notes of gardenia, tuberose, tarragon, ylang-ylang, violet leaves, jasmine, lily of the valley. Dry down notes of oak moss, musk, sandalwood and benzoin.”
As a junior high school girl, I could never afford my own bottle of Jungle Gardenia, but I snuck to the Rexall back then the way I am sneaking to the department stores now for Chanel No. 5, almost as if I am slipping away to a romantic interlude. And I never forgot Jungle Gardenia, the way we never forget our first love. Even when I was an awkward adolescent, it transported me to another reality. It appears that Elizabeth Taylor felt much the same way about it, and even developed her own Gardenia perfume a few years back. When Irma Shorrel bought the formula and started making what is supposed to be the original scent again, I bought a bottle. It smells very similar, but somehow not quite the same as it did in the Rexall when it was forbidden and I had to face the disapproving eye of the matron behind the counter when I tested it over and over. All she saw was a junior high school girl using up the tester with no ability to buy. She couldn’t see that I transformed into Jackie, Audrey,or Princess Grace with a couple of sprays of that magical elixir.
During the 1960s, I rendezvoused with Yardley’s Oh! De London. Sporting long straight hair and bangs, mini-skirts and white boots, I easily turned into Jean Shrimpton, Olivia Hussey, Jane Asher, Patti Boyd with a couple of sprays of Yardley. Sadly, O! De London was gone by the 1970s. There were also brief interludes with Tabu, Ambush, Tigress, and Kiku, -- and my Wind Song surely stayed on somebody’s mind. I could never forget Charlie, or the brief dalliance with Forever Krystle during the heyday of Linda Evans, John Forsythe, and Dynasty.
In the 1980s, my friend, Nadya, introduced me to Pheromone by Marilyn Mignon. When she changed to Jessica McLintock, she gave me most of a boxed set of Pheromone, and I continued to wear that fragrance into the 1990s. Pheromone not only smells exotic and wonderful but also comes with a story worth repeating. The Mignon website relates that “in her search for a scent unlike any other, Marilyn Miglin traveled the four corners of the world visiting the place where perfumes were held in higher esteem than gold, Egypt. There, she examined unearthed jars, which once contained cherished essences and found that traces of fragrance remained after 5,000 years. From a search of carved temple reliefs and ancient hieroglyphs, she uncovered astonishingly complex and unforgettable formulations. Upon translation, ancient secrets for compounding and blending were unlocked from recorded time.”
Not only that. To make Pheromone, “Jasmine blossoms in full bloom during the night must be gathered before dawn when their scent reaches its highest level. Tonka extract come from a rare tree in Venezuela. Its tiny Ambrette seeds require precise soaking in rum before they are dried in the sun and ready for extrusion.”
The recipe for Pheromone sounds as exotic as the silks and dyes in that handkerchief Othello gave to Desdemona, that fateful gift from a gypsy lady to his mother, its silk having coming from hallowed silk worms and its color from the blood of mummies.
So I have surprised myself: not a perfume girl I thought. For years, I have claimed interest only in pure essential oils and have turned up my nose at “store bought” perfumes, but a little retrospection has unveiled a truth about myself that until now I have not embraced. So I welcome a new year with the thought that in the last days of 2009, a few weeks before turning 56, I know myself a little better. What might I discover in 2010? Not sure, but I will be smelling good when the epiphany comes!
On New Year’s Eve night, my friends Bob and Gail Langley picked me up to ride with them to Jimmy and Joanne Camp’s party. The second I got in the car, Gail asked if I smelled her. I answered, “why, yes, but I thought it was my lapel.”
New Year’s Eve is also Bob and Gail’s 26th wedding anniversary and Gail had asked for a bottle of J’Adore Perfume by Christian Dior, a “radiant, sensual, sophisticated … fragrance that celebrates the renaissance of extreme femininity and the power of spontaneous emotion with a brilliant bouquet of orchids, the velvet touch of Damascus plum, and the mellowness of amaranth wood.” Gail continues to surprise me. I never pegged her as a girl who would ask for perfume, but she sure did smell good.
Just as Gail surprised me in asking for perfume as an anniversary gift --she and Bob had exchanged cremations for Christmas after all -- I surprise myself in realizing that the luxury I have indulged in during my Christmas break from teaching has been to stop in at the mall several times a week to spray myself with Chanel No. 5, alternating of course between the tester at Dillard’s and the one at Belk. I cannot in good conscience pay nearly $100 for a bottle of perfume when there are homeless creatures in the world who need money more than the Chanel empire does, but for some reason, it has given me comfort this Christmas season to smell that scent that so many women from my childhood wore.
I’ve written before about my early “love affair” with Jungle Gardenia by Tuvache. How melodic even its formulas is: “top notes of sage, clary oil, bitter orange oil, cyclamen, heliotrope. Middle notes of gardenia, tuberose, tarragon, ylang-ylang, violet leaves, jasmine, lily of the valley. Dry down notes of oak moss, musk, sandalwood and benzoin.”
As a junior high school girl, I could never afford my own bottle of Jungle Gardenia, but I snuck to the Rexall back then the way I am sneaking to the department stores now for Chanel No. 5, almost as if I am slipping away to a romantic interlude. And I never forgot Jungle Gardenia, the way we never forget our first love. Even when I was an awkward adolescent, it transported me to another reality. It appears that Elizabeth Taylor felt much the same way about it, and even developed her own Gardenia perfume a few years back. When Irma Shorrel bought the formula and started making what is supposed to be the original scent again, I bought a bottle. It smells very similar, but somehow not quite the same as it did in the Rexall when it was forbidden and I had to face the disapproving eye of the matron behind the counter when I tested it over and over. All she saw was a junior high school girl using up the tester with no ability to buy. She couldn’t see that I transformed into Jackie, Audrey,or Princess Grace with a couple of sprays of that magical elixir.
During the 1960s, I rendezvoused with Yardley’s Oh! De London. Sporting long straight hair and bangs, mini-skirts and white boots, I easily turned into Jean Shrimpton, Olivia Hussey, Jane Asher, Patti Boyd with a couple of sprays of Yardley. Sadly, O! De London was gone by the 1970s. There were also brief interludes with Tabu, Ambush, Tigress, and Kiku, -- and my Wind Song surely stayed on somebody’s mind. I could never forget Charlie, or the brief dalliance with Forever Krystle during the heyday of Linda Evans, John Forsythe, and Dynasty.
In the 1980s, my friend, Nadya, introduced me to Pheromone by Marilyn Mignon. When she changed to Jessica McLintock, she gave me most of a boxed set of Pheromone, and I continued to wear that fragrance into the 1990s. Pheromone not only smells exotic and wonderful but also comes with a story worth repeating. The Mignon website relates that “in her search for a scent unlike any other, Marilyn Miglin traveled the four corners of the world visiting the place where perfumes were held in higher esteem than gold, Egypt. There, she examined unearthed jars, which once contained cherished essences and found that traces of fragrance remained after 5,000 years. From a search of carved temple reliefs and ancient hieroglyphs, she uncovered astonishingly complex and unforgettable formulations. Upon translation, ancient secrets for compounding and blending were unlocked from recorded time.”
Not only that. To make Pheromone, “Jasmine blossoms in full bloom during the night must be gathered before dawn when their scent reaches its highest level. Tonka extract come from a rare tree in Venezuela. Its tiny Ambrette seeds require precise soaking in rum before they are dried in the sun and ready for extrusion.”
The recipe for Pheromone sounds as exotic as the silks and dyes in that handkerchief Othello gave to Desdemona, that fateful gift from a gypsy lady to his mother, its silk having coming from hallowed silk worms and its color from the blood of mummies.
So I have surprised myself: not a perfume girl I thought. For years, I have claimed interest only in pure essential oils and have turned up my nose at “store bought” perfumes, but a little retrospection has unveiled a truth about myself that until now I have not embraced. So I welcome a new year with the thought that in the last days of 2009, a few weeks before turning 56, I know myself a little better. What might I discover in 2010? Not sure, but I will be smelling good when the epiphany comes!
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