An envisioning. 1997, and four o'clock on a winter's afternoon at the cottage in Glenwillow Falls.

Oh to be here.

Back home after a walk along the lake. Everything drenched, with the housekeeper helping first with the jacket and then the galoshes. Ohio fine, but Mariposa County way better. Warm and sunny and all that, but children who like freezing their fingers off and living where lakes ice up instead of drying up with the end of the wet season. Getting sick, needing help and stuck. No one about to move to California and Ohio and a life staring at sleet instead.

But still. A silver lining, no matter where you are. A main street with shops you can walk to all by yourself, even if the taxi man can't come today. A framing shop down at the end with at least two glass storefronts filled with pictures. Impossible it is to tell which are ready to be picked up, which ones the owner likes, and maybe which ones someone forgot about and went with something from the final markdown at Woolworth's.

Walking down to buy more thread from the quilt lady and nearly fainting from the joy of it all . . . someone running up but stopping them with a smile . . . an old advertisement for Harper's Bazaar, the model all draped up in red and blue . . . not at the photographer's in downtown Los Angeles the day it was shot but Mother being friends with the photographer's wife and seeing it later tacked up under glass in their hallway over the umbrella stand. . . a treat and that forever . . . right after the war it was with everyone still wearing dreary khaki wartime drabness . . . such lovely colors . . . never something you could forget . . . not ever.

Salute for Freedom, advertisement for Bianchini-Férier, Harpers Bazaar, August 1945. Erwin Blumenfield, photographer (1897-1969). Image © Estate of the photographer. Fair use license. via https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2019/feb/20/smuggling-art-into-fashion-erwin-blumenfelds-high-style-in-pictures?page=with:img-7 though I found it here on Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/thats.so.classic/p/DLr4wiQgK4U/?hl=en