It's the day after Christmas and all through the house is... memories. That's what is in this house. Memories of old and memories today, the day after Christmas that were made just yesterday. I asked one of our guests last night if this time of year brought back memories and she assured me that it did. My husband's brother and wife called us for Christmas yesterday and I told her that it seems the older I get I should be running out of new/old memories, but it doesn't happen that way. This memory is just an example that happened to me Christmas Eve, 2023.
We were expecting company for Christmas Eve and I thought I would put some lipstick on. I don't wear it very often and there's a reason for that. I'm almost out of lipstick. I carry it in my purse in case I want to wear it. You see it is very very old. My mother gave me this lipstick. It was the last gift she gave me for Christmas. I know that you are thinking it's just lipstick. No, it's a Christmas memory.
One day years ago I told my mother that I just loved her lipstick. It was the perfect color and seemed to really compliment her snowy white hair and her blue eyes. Well that Christmas I got a gift that I just loved. A lipstick just like my mother wore. Oh how I loved it. It seemed to change a bit with every outfit I wore. In fact it was a bit strange. It looked good with red, purple, yellow, green; whatever I wore.
Most every year after that I would receive a stick lipstick either for Christmas or for my birthday. Sometimes she would even ask me if I needed some lipstick and would give me hers. I never ran out.
Lipstick was a Christmas memory for my mother that she passed along to us each Christmas. My father and mother were married in the thirties and were very poor. My father decided that he wanted to be a linotype operator, but the school for that was in Minnesota. He hitchhiked there and took the course; leaving my mother and my older sister maybe two little ones at home. I can't remember for sure. If I remember right the course was nine months long.
Mother lived in a basement house on my grandparent's farm, so she and her children were taken care of as far as food and family.
My father hitchhiked home for Christmas. Now you have to remember the winters in Minnesota and Iowa were cold ones. It came time to open gifts that Mom had made him and from my grandparents and much to my mother's surprise my father had a gift for her. It was a lipstick! It was called Tangee. It was orange and it changed to pink when applied to her lips. That was the only lipstick I can remember her wearing when I was a child. Now it is sold on Ebay! By the way she said I alway cried when she put on lipstick when I was little because I told her that she didn't look like mom. Oh how she loved to tell those stories.
She said that Dad spent his last quarter on that lipstick for her. Now that's poor. But the love!
So getting back to my last stick lipstick which is really way too old to wear, I decided to order myself one from Amazon and finally throw away the one that Mom gave me so many years ago. Much to my surprise there was only one left in stock! I might add that it was ten dollars! Mercy I ordered it as fast as I could. Hopefully I will be able to wear it a few more times until it too is gone just leaving the Christmas memories and a smile on my face.
This is the last studio picture of my mother and of course, she is wearing "The lipstick!"
