The suitcase

I remember always thinking that my grandma was a "cool" one. Grams drove her own car (her husband had died when I was 2). Wore white dresses and heels with beehive hairdo's dyed red. She wore eye brow make-up and red lipstick. When my grandma would come to visit in Minnesota she had this great small piece of luggage... it had a lock and when it it opened there was a mirror in the cover and a removable tray. The tray housed plenty of good things - but oh the pleasure when you would take the tray out and there would be all these things that little girls loved. She would always let me look through it and use the make up and try on the jewelry. I thought she must be rich at the time - all those jewels and sometimes a little something for me. On every trip I remember that suitcase, the pleasure of touching it with small hands that wanted to be grown up... to try black eye brow pencil with red lipstick... and wonder if I would be as pretty as my mom and grams when I grew up. There was a comfort in seeing it when we went to her house also, it was always in her bathroom. Through the years as I grew older, I never remember the things in there changing much... it lost its appeal as I bought my own make-up...

It was in 2004 when my grams moved from her home in Huron, SD - back to Willow Lake, where she had been born and raised and then raised her own family. She moved to an apartment to be closer to my aunt as she was needing more help.

I remember when we packed up the house... the suitcase...

Funny how things go - it looked exactly the same as I remembered it when I was a little girl.

And I wonder if my grams packed that suitcase back in 1960 and brought it each time for her little girl? Could it be possible she didn't wear make-up and jewelry at all?