TREASURE HUNT

When I was a little girl there was something alluring and mysterious about my grandmother’s dressing table.

She was a practical woman who, now that I think about it, must have worked from sunrise to sunset caring for her family. A family that included the three very young grandchildren left in her care.

Most of the time my grandmother wore sensible shoes, easy-to-care-for clothing and little or no make-up. She wasn’t a glamorous person.

But the table in her room hinted at another life.

Pretty perfume bottles with elaborate stoppers and little frosted glass pots to hold powder and other things were arranged on the top. Everything was delicate and fragile and feminine. They were a woman’s secret tools and I wasn’t allowed to touch them. Naturally, I couldn’t keep away. Every chance I got I reached up to trace the sharp edges of a cut-crystal dish with the tip of my finger or lifted the soft powder puff out of the container to brush my skin with my grandmother’s scent.

Now, living the hectic life most busy women lead, picking comfort over glamour, sensible over sexy, easy-care over high-maintenance, I have a different window into my grandmother’s longing for pretty things; things that don’t have anything to do with work or keeping house or raising a family.

I have some of her pieces on my own vanity and I’ve added other treasures to the mix, things I’ve picked up over the years at antique shops and auctions. And more than once I’ve discovered one of my girls touching those things.

Dainty pieces on a dressing table, or even tossed into the mix of lotions and cosmetics scattered over a cluttered bathroom vanity remind us to take a minute now and then to pamper ourselves or, at the very least, to appreciate pretty things.

And sometimes, when we least expect it, they bring back tender thoughts and the perfumed trace of a memory.