Bedroom treasures

Once upon a time, lo, these many years ago, there was a little girl. A version of little girl perhaps three or four years older than this one.

She was a happy little girl, except for glitches now and then - after all she had a BB and sister to torture her. But again, that’s par for the course when you’re the youngest isn’t it? Now seriously, would you torture someone so angelic looking??? Apparently, looks can be deceiving, I'm told, but I digress.

Mom had a fascinating object on her dresser. As far back as I can remember I have loved this object, a glass perfume bottle. It just seemed so perfect. Round and shiny, with no extra embellishment. Just the round shiny bottle with its long thin stopper.



I could spend hours looking at it, touching it, holding it in my hands. It just seemed the epitome of elegance and perfection to me at the time. It still does. Plain is better - at least in regards to perfume bottles.

Recently mom told me its story.

She and Dad were living in Ontario at the time. BB and my sister were just little kids. One Sunday, they strolled past an antique shop and Mom spotted this bottle in the window. She immediately loved it. Of course, this was in those prehistoric times when shops weren't open on Sundays. Besides, it was in an antique shop, and so, as far as she was concerned way too expensive. After all, raising two kids on an air force salary, even back then didn't leave that much wiggle room for indulging in useless perfume bottles. So it remained nothing but a pretty trinket in a window.

A week later, Dad came home from work with something for her. Yep, the perfume bottle. And to make things even better, as far as my Mom was concerned - because no one hunts down a bargain like my mom - he paid fifty cents for it.

That fifty cent perfume bottle became my treasure, even though I wasn't allowed to take it from her bedroom dresser. Once in a while though, she'd indulge me and let me pick it up and open it, hold its weightiness in my hands. Those days were wonderful. I had held IT, my personal holy grail.

I've never been one to play princess much - boring as all hell, being a princess and having to await rescue. Instead I was a pirate, or the prince on his white steed battling the dragon for its treasure. That bottle always topped the list of imagined treasure.

Mom gave me the bottle at Christmas. Something got caught in my eye at that point, provoking a certain dampness. Now it sits at the cottage and I still love it and pick it up and open it... it's still my treasure.


PS: I also don't do maudlin much, but I need to keep y'all destablized once in a while dontcha know.