All posts by Dona

Echt Email

Memories, Things

I once owned a charm bracelet. I think my Aunt Ginny gave it to me. It was silver and had a few charms. The only charm I remember is a Christmas tree, but I probably had 4 or 5 charms on it. It was lost when my jewelry box was stolen when we lived in Pittsburgh.

I must have worn it in front of Jeremy, because he sent me a charm from Germany. I still have it — mostly because of the note on the back.

This has been sitting around for years, waiting to be blogged about. Well, here you go…

I don’t speak or read German but Professor Google tells me that Echt Email can mean either “Authentic e-mail” or “Authentic enamel.” Since I got this in the 1970s, I will assume it means the latter.

Charm, still in plastic
Note from Jeremy

Two bottles of “Evening in Paris”

Things, , ,

When I was very young, my folks didn’t go out all that often, but when they did I knew it by the smell. Mom would put on either Topaz or Evening in Paris fragrances.

While Mom’s bottle of Topaz is long-gone, I have two empty, but still fragrant, bottles of Evening in Paris.

Occasionally I open one of the bottles and take a sniff. I can still feel that weird, I don’t want you to leave, emotion I had when my parents would go out for the night.

The truth about the girl in the photo

Things
Unknown girl

My folks inherited my Grandma Patrick’s china cabinet and throughout the years objects came and went from the cabinet. I found a box full of things that I remembered having been in the china cabinet over the years.

Some of the things were old photos. One photo in an ornate oval frame was in the china cabinet for the past several years. The photo was of a young girl holding dried flowers and wearing a lace cap over ringlets. I don’t know if I ever asked Mom who it was, but I assumed it was either her mother or Dad’s mother when they were very young.

When I brought it back to Bethesda I began to get suspicious because it looked like neither of my grandmothers’ other childhood photos. I took the photo out of the frame and was not terribly surprised to see that it was not printed on photo paper, but plain, shiny paper — the kind that comes with frames.

I don’t know how long that photo with the stock photo of the long-ago young girl sat in Mom’s china cabinet, but it did give me a laugh.