Elizabeth Powers

Strings Too Short to Use

Ever since I can remember, even as a child, that brown paper box sat on a shelf in my mother’s closet. It was a high shelf, above the clothes racks, where she kept her hats. Back in the 1950’s women wore hats to town, to church, to teas or to any sort of event or gathering that required dressing up. It was the fashion and my mother fancied herself fashionable. Mom was born in 1897 and when she and my father adopted me, she was 45 years of age.