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Show 26 Mama put her wedding dress in the tin trunk, and took to Mother Hubbards with regularity from then on. The trunk, with pink embossed flowers, banded by wood, was daintily papered inside with a flower pattern. It held the family treasures. With her dress were deposited the orange blossoms and small satin slippers she wore at her wedding, and a generous square of her wedding cake, wrapped in tissue and tied with a ribbon. Each of the girls tried on her wedding outfit, and each child in the family nibbled at the cake, so that the edges became rounded as if by mice and the cake shrunk year after year. There was a crazy-patch pillow top of silk scraps, sewed with the fancy stitches of Mama's learning, a small, bead-covered box, the delicate work of Mama's grandmother Rawlinson, and Mama's school notebook with exquisite drawings in the margins-scrolled birds and flowers, cubes and friendship hands. She had been punished many times by her school masters for such time-wasting activities. There was the wedding certificate, rolled and tied with a white satin ribbon. Into the trunk, year after year, went additional treasures, diplomas, promotion cards, deeds, and the Doctor Book, with candid drawings of embryo babies in cross-sections of mothers, not fit for young eyes to see. Not that young eyes didn't see. Getting into the trunk along with eating cinnamon and suger, was the first thing we thought of when Mama and Papa went to Elsinore or Richfield shopping and we were on our own for a long afternoon. |
