More Little Gifts!

 I went over to Sister's for dinner on her birthday––(I'm on the right). She's two years older than me. I've got our father's white hair, and hers is staying dark like our mother's.

Sister looks somewhat sad because she and her wife had had to put their 11-y.o. dog down the day before. The dog had been unwell, but they hadn't expected the diagnosis of advanced & inoperable cancer...
So it happened suddenly, and it's the inevitable sadness of loving a short-lived creature.

Nonetheless, sister cheered up with dinner and a pile of  LITTLE GIFTS from me. I'm glad I had them already selected and saved in my work area at the thrift store--all bought from donations.

Let's see... there was a 300-piece puzzle of a cat that looks like one of her three cats;
a raspberry-colored Eileen Fisher scoop-neck sweater (gorgeous) in lightweight merino wool, suitable for cool summer mornings;
half a yard-wide bolt of crinkly yellow fabric (plissé? “pleated” or “wrinkled” in French)--sister sews and likes fun fabrics;
a medal I'd got in Albuquerque of a black Madonna like the one we'd seen on a field trip last fall;
and three books and a magazine:

The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, a novel by Stephen Carter (she's been reading about the Civil War all year)

Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, a memoir by Alice Waters (sister is sort of a foodie--also, this is history of our generation)

The screenplay for Thirty-two Short Films about Glenn Gould--we'd seen the movie together in 1993 and wept--our parents loved Glenn Gould

A 1975 Newsweek with Bruce Springsteen on the cover (also, our 
generation).

Those last three remind me--I've become the age that when famous people die, we know who they are--from our lived experience.
They were part of the weave of our life, for better or worse, like, recently, Tina Turner and the Unabomber--and the fabric starts to feel a bit gappy...

Also, contemporaries start to die off. Recently I ran into a coworker from the art college library--her husband was actively dying of cancer. They're a touch older than me (mid-sixties)... I used to go to their house for dinner twenty years ago. So.

ANYWAY... little gifties are happy making! And it was nice to see they cheered sister up. My credo works (sometimes).

bink had been unhappy that for 2 birthdays in a row, I didn't have little presents for her, like I've usually had. (They've almost always been little--as, in, not big $ ticket items—most often secondhand, or handmade. It mystifies me when people disdain thrifted gifts—they’re the best!)

Since I've worked at the thrift store, five years now, I tend to give things that remind me of someone to that person throughout the year, and then I have nothing special set aside for holidays or birthdays.

I agree with bink--that's a mistake--to me, birthdays are special, there's no other day that is FOR YOU alone. So I started to save gifts this past year.
There's an art to it. Generic gifts like bouquet of flowers are nice--but I love the hunt for ones that reflect the unique person--and of course working in a thrift store with a river of stuff passing by, that hunt is a lot easier.

That One Relative

I hadn't been to sister's in five years--since the summer our father was dying and sister's wife (my S-I-L) was telling me how I should treat him. SIL is like that--she was a social worker and she loves to tell you what you're doing WRONG.

I'd told her to stop telling me what to do, and that had led to a big fight. I hadn't been asked back.
Last year, she emailed me, asking if I'd like to "normalize relations", and I said yes. Why not?
I'd thought she might have mellowed, but mygod, she started right in:
"You look like your mother" she told me, disapprovingly.

That should be a compliment, or at least a nice connection, but she clearly meant it as criticism. Basically, "My, you've gotten thick around the middle". 
(I have! I've thickened into the same shape my mother had. It's nice that I have her body, I feel her with me.
I wish I'd just replied, "Thank you", but I was caught off guard.)

The last dozen years of suicidal depression had not done my mother any favors in the beauty department. But she'd been lovely.
I'd recently come across this photo of my mother in a happy time, mid-1970s:

I'm glad sister had a happy time with me, but I won't be going back for anything that involves SIL.
We almost all have some relative like that, don't we?
"Avoid Uncle Larry."

More Gay Pride Rainbows 

Update on the rainbow displays I helped Ass't Man put together. I often talk about the store in terms of drugs and poverty, but a lot of hip healthy happy young things shop there too---like this young woman who walked in the door just as I was photographing the end caps.
"Oh, you match the orange," I said, "you can be part of the display!"

And she instantly assumed an Instagram-compatible pose---I bet she's been posing for social media since she was a tot!
She reminds me of one of Linda Sue's wooden Polish dolls.

If I post photos of strangers in the store, I usually block their faces--and I always do when they're kids––but this young person was a consenting adult.

When I was a new blogger fifteen years ago, there was concern about posting children's photos--for safety reasons, as well as issues of children being too young to give informed consent.
But for many grownups, it's no longer an issue--it's become one of our New Norms, I guess .

Here are the other two rainbow end caps. Anything exciting on them has already or will soon be snatched up---those space-era star-pattern plates in with the greens, for instance, and, top-center of the blues, the vintage Hall bread pan with lid (underpriced at $3.99--anything vintage with an unbroken matching lid is gold).
I thought about getting both of these myself, but---neh, I am tired of bringing stuff home. In fact, I'm starting to take stuff back.

OK, I hope you have a 😌 good day, everyone, or a not-too-bad one!