Magical Thinking

My grandfather was one of the best friends a child could ever have.  He never seemed to tire of spending time with us, entertaining us, creating jokes and poems and riddles for us to laugh over and solve together.

We lived in South Philadelphia until the summer before I started second grade. At that time my parents joined what seemed like a mass exodus to the suburbs. I liked the city then and I still do.  My parents were young and just starting to make their way in the world.  My mom left Catholic nursing school to have me (and my brother, shortly thereafter) and my dad was discharged from the Coast Guard and working at the Gulf Oil Refinery.

I remember my mom sold Avon for a little while. Actually, what I mostly remember were those little tiny lipstick samples. She must have had hundreds of them. They all looked like little tiny highlighters, the size of the tip of a pinky finger.

One day, while sitting at the little table and chairs in my childhood bedroom, I perused the latest Avon catalog and called in my order on my Fisher Price play phone.  What I really wanted was the It's a Small World cream perfume. It came in a little white glass jar and the top had the earth in the center and a ring of children from all walks of life, holding hands around the edge.

Considering the state of the large Barbie head which had received an absolutely horrible, trashy makeover and was still sporting some really nifty rollers right in front of me on the table, it's a darn good thing I wasn't really ordering anything to make her beauty situation and more precarious than it was.  Poor Barbie, I'm so grateful that I learned to temper my love of color and hand eye coordination in the years between when I went to town on that poor and vaguely creepy severed doll head and today, when I apply my own make up to go out into the world.

Anyway, as I was placing my order, the doorbell rang.  I rushed my pretend Avon representative off of the phone, closed the week's sale catalog and raced downstairs to answer the door.  Standing there was my grandfather, with that little, plain white bag that Avon orders always came in.  Inside, I found my It's A Small World cream perfume, just as I had ordered on my pretend phone moments before.   I still feel like Grandpop made a little magic for me that day.

 The package was darling, the memory was golden. In fact, I can, right at this moment, see the built in bookcase at the bottom of the stairs as I headed down and my grandfather standing on the stoop with the little white bag in his hand.

For the record:  That stuff smelled horrible!