MYSTERY SOLVED

When I was a little girl I loved to visit my grandparents. I especially loved the summers at their house on Schoolcraft Avenue in Detroit. My mom would drop me off there and I'd spend the day with my grandmother, hanging around the house, watering her flower garden, sitting in the sunny kitchen, waiting for the most delicious fluffy scrambled egg made in her funny small iron frying pan, angling for a handful of m&ms, chatting with the next door neighbor, Mrs. Thompson, who would stand in the kitchen, just inside the back door, having shell macaroni for dinner, doing a little sewing project, just following her around talking and learning. She's the one who first taught me the Greek alphabet, showed me Bewitched, watched movies with me, fed me toasted pumpkin seeds. When my mom came to pick me up, I'd beg to spend the night there even though I didn't have nightclothes with me. If I spent the night I was supposed to sleep in the pink room, a place of endless fascination with its waterfall vanity and deep dark closet. I didn't like sleeping in there though, even if the pink flowery sheet was on the bed because the window would be open and they lived on a busy street, and it would be noisy/scary. I preferred to sleep with my grandmother, on the side of the bed close to her waterfall vanity and the treasures in her jewelry box. My grandmother seemed a rather big woman in those days - by today's standards she'd probably be a size 12. In those days she was a size 16. Anyway, there was one nightgown in her drawer that was smaller than the rest, and that's the one I wore. And still wear. Over the years it's become almost threadbare and I've repaired it and repaired it. I decided years ago that Mom must have made this since it's a simple design with bias tape trim and a ruffle. It almost completely fell apart this summer and has been on my to-do sewing repair pile for months. Just now I patched it up yet again, and as I did so, I noticed that the seams were serged. That means Mom didn't make the nightgown. She didn't have a serger, and home sergers were not even on the market in those days. Further inspection showed that in the shoulder there is a faded tag. Mom didn't make the nightgown. Nevertheless, someday when I die and the daughter-in-law I don't yet have, or one of my nieces or goddaughter is going through my stuff, they will come upon this rag. I hope they wonder why it's in the drawer, but they might just shrug and toss it out. That's what happens with our histories.....except if they read my blog, they will know the story of the pink polka-dot nightgown.