Sweet!

I'm having a flashback today. Flashing back to #16...the sweet one!

The first time I saw a Sweet 16 corsage was when my Mom made one for one of our neighbors. It was amazing! She tied together multiple light blue satin ribbons to make a big bow. A white carnation posey sat atop the bow. Beneath the flower flowed 16 enormous sugar cubes, each one individually tied with a satin ribbon to look like a present.

I couldn't wait for my big day to come....years later!

Sure enough, on my 16th, the white florists' box came out of the fridge, and there was my own beautiful powder-blue Sweet 16 corsage! Of course, by the time I turned 16, I was experiencing massive jolts of negative self-esteem and felt a bit embarrassed about wearing this monstrous floral display. I wouldn't be the first girl in my high school to wear a corsage, but I might have been the first to consider hiding it in her locker.

Well, that didn't happen. In fact, that morning, I picked my favorite light-blue gauzy blouse to wear and had Mom plop that corsage nice and high. No one else had ever seen a corsage like that and thought it was cool that my Mom had made it.

Mom saved the corsage in a box and passed it along many years later, dried carnations and everything. "I saved it so you'll know how to make one of your own one day," she said.

Flashing forward to this week, I secured the familiar yellow box of Domino sugar cubes. (Athough, Mom, they just don't make those enormous cubes anymore. I think someone discovered sugar was a bad thing to have in excess and cut the size of the cubes in half!) I didn't have the powder-blue ribbon, but, in looking at some other Sweet 16 corsages online, most of them were done in pink, which I did have.

Mom's finished "presents" always looked perfect. I am still wondering how she maneuvered that ribbon so well, because I nearly lost it in trying to keep the bows fastened. (But, now I know why she was always working into the night!!)

I have to say, the 16 dangling sweets continue to enchant me. CJ won't see one of these for another six years.

Maybe those large sugar cubes will come back into vogue by then.

* * *

And Happy Birthday to a very sweet, smart
and enormously talented young woman on Friday!!