Memories are timeless treasures of the heart
Unknown
by Cathern Harrison April 5 2007
This morning I looked out the bay window
through a snow shower and had déjà vu.
The family across the street was leaving to go to work and school. Why did that take me back forty-six years?
The woman was wearing a lovely red coat.
I’ve seen that coat on her before but this morning the conditions were right to
take me back all those years. The
weather, the fact that tomorrow is Good Friday and the veiled glimpse I had of
the coat, through our birch trees is what did it.
My
memory envisioned me standing outside church after the Easter Sunday morning
service in 1961. I was wearing a coat of
a very similar red and design feeling on top of the World dressed to the hilts
in my Easter refinery. That cherry red
coat was the first I had bought for myself not long before Easter. That Easter
morning was very much like today, a return to winter, snowy and cool enough to
need that coat.
It is the only memory I have of that coat
but the reason it stands out is not as much about it but rather the gift my
boyfriend had given me and I was wearing as well that day.
We had started dating just before I got
that coat. Knowing Easter was coming and my family would be going to church I
wanted a bonnet to wear with the red beauty. Spring/Easter bonnets were a
tradition from childhood. My mother spent hours creating bonnets for her
daughters but this year I could have something different from my younger
sisters because I was a working girl now.
(not my coat no pictures of it)
On
payday we, (I was with my boyfriend), were off to shop after we’d cashed our
cheques in the Eaton's accounting department.
Going down the escalators from the top floor where accounting was, I
spotted hats. Off the moving stairs to
investigate I came across the loveliest white straw bonnet I had ever seen. It had a red mesh veil on the front which added
a bit of intrigue to it. However,
the attraction was the beautiful, large red flower highlight on the
side, it was the perfect hat to accentuate my red coat.
(Not the hat either :D )
My boyfriend bought it for me for Easter. I
was thrilled until our mothers got wind of the gift. We were both given a lecture for such an
inappropriate gift for a boy to give a girl he’d only known a short time.
Well here we are forty-six years later and
he didn’t think I was ‘fast’ (promiscuous) as
our mothers feared,
because we are still together. In August he will have
been my husband for forty-three years.
How times have changed, now I’m more than
likely to get house and gardening gadgets.
However perhaps this is why red makes me happy and is my favorite colour.
"Just the colour red makes me smile"
Unknown
However perhaps this is why red makes me happy and is my favorite colour.
………………………………………
We
had started dating on March 15th his first pay cheque, Easter Sunday
that year was April 2nd so he
bought me that hat with his second pay cheque… I likely had gotten the coat on
that same pay cheque…
November 2016
We are now in our 53rd year
of marriage and have been a couple for 55 plus !
Life is good
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