Memories of the White Elephant Sale run deep
News, dispensed by my mother with a sombre look, that Trinity Church would stop the White Elephant Sale this weekend — after more than 100 years — gave me an inside out feeling.
Like the clothes I would try on and off and let fall in piles at my feet when the chapel becomes the women's clothes department and the narrow hallway by the altar is the makeshift dressing room.
The three-day sale has always been in May, just as the lilacs are blooming, drawing antique dealers and the biggest crowds on Saturdays.
It's something I always thought was cool about being from Buffalo.
When I lived in Maine, I used to drive back for the rummage sale with its mysterious name, and the retired Buffalo police officer with a ruddy Irish face who guarded the church hall entrance with affection.
Just the mention of the White Elephant, to friends already in the know, then and even now, brings a conspiratorial smile. We know we'll meet up at the sale, swap cashmere in the wrong size and decide whether the designer suit is worth $10.
For others who've heard me answer, "The White Elephant" a thousand times, I tried to use their compliments on my treasured finds — like my fuzzy purple mohair coat — as proof that they should take my advice: Come shop.
The White Elephant is a couple levels of elegance beyond what you'd expect. The church basement and chapel get divided up like a department store with rooms for china, books, kitchenware, linens, children's, women's clothes.
Lately, I've been explaining this more to people as I try to work out why the end is so sad for me. The old Delaware Avenue church with Tiffany windows, across from the Buffalo Club, had a blue blood reputation. Families who made fortunes in steel and factories took on charity projects to help the poor. The sale raised money and recycled and purged good old things that could still be put to use, like the prom dresses a city school worker bought last year for her students.
Sometimes, it was as if I was buying some of old Buffalo's riches filtered down from the Pan American Exposition of 1901. For a dollar or two, I had my own monogrammed high-ball glasses, a tarnished silver cigarette box, linen towels with Fs and Ms embroidered in peach and appliqued satin.
Utilitarian whimsy gets me, too. When I make salads, I use a clawed scoop with "TOMATO SHARK" stamped on the handle to cut out stems. I found it in the kitchen department, long organized by my mother.
A Chair For My Mother - News
My competition is good natured. Others can be fierce. Once, two couples fought over a prized 1920s-era deck chair made of some fine wood, maybe teak. Their bitter spat led to hushed advice not to mention it at a dinner party days later. My mother says
With a large jar on the kitchen counter that is filled every day with coins, someday there will be a new chair for mother. Vera B. Williams, author of , illustrates the power of a goal and importance of having a path to get there.
Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian My father's name was Quentin Bell. He was an academic and an artist. My parents were happily married for 44 years, and though he died in 1996 he is still very much present in my mother's life.
My mother collected fussy antiques and my father turned our basement into a 1930s mountain trading lodge. But I've always loved all sorts of design aesthetics. When I bought this house, it made me more attuned to modern design and I wanted to give it
When she told us that three bombs had gone off my mother just slumped into a chair and said 'Anna is dead'. "I still didn't think the worst. We switched on the TV and saw the news about the bombs and it was obvious that neither the guards nor anyone
A Chair for My Mother « Book-A-Day Almanac
Today we celebrate Mother’s Day, a time to remember all of the sacrifices and kindnesses of our mothers. As a body of stories, children’s books are probably kinder to fathers than mothers. But our Book-of-the-Day is about a memorable mother and a child who appreciates her.
Vera Williams grew up in a household where her mother had a full-time job. As a child, she often wished her mom stayed at home, like others in the neighborhood. But later when Vera herself became a working mother, she realized what a wonderful gift she had been given: not only shelter and food but also an example of a woman who balanced family and work. Fortunately, authors can write from their own experience or they can rewrite history, imagining a childhood they would have liked to have had. In the case of Vera Williams, she created Rosa, the daughter she wished she had been, to narrate A Chair for My Mother . She writes, “I now had the power, as a writer and an illustrator, to change the past into something I liked better and to make it as a kind of gift to my mother’s memory.”
In this beautiful example of a mother/daughter relationship, the little girl Rosa says, “My mother works as a waitress for the Blue Tile Diner.” A fire has left the family without any good furniture, particularly a sofa and comfortable chairs. And so all the tips that her mother makes, the coins that her grandmother saves when she gets a bargain, or anything Rosa can contribute go into a large glass jar. In the end, they go shopping and finally find a plump rose-covered chair that the girl and her mother can snuggle in together. Although the family is poor, they are very rich in community and in loving relationships. Hence each illustration in this book is framed with a lush border that indicates the rich emotional life these three women share with each other and with their neighbors.
Besides being a wonderful book to use with very young readers ages three through eight, parents enjoy the book just as much as children. A Chair for My Mother Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mother’s here. I’ve read this little book and I really I like the author’s thinking of the possibility of changing the past into something better with her pen. Yes. What a gift that can be. As a child, I was obsessed with saving my mother someday, which unknown to me, was impossible. Something extraordinary ( it was so unexpected) I have come to own in my soul of souls, is that when one’s mother was a harmful experience, an incredible thing can happen later.
A Chair For My Mother - Bookshelf
A chair for my mother
A child, her waitress mother, and her grandmother save dimes to buy a comfortable armchair after all their furniture is lost in a fire.A chair for my mother
A child, her waitress mother, and her grandmother save dimes to buy a comfortable armchair after all their furniture is lost in a fire.A chair for my mother, read aloud
A Chair for My Mother
A Chair for My Mother
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A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams - Reviews ...
A Chair for My Mother has 684 ratings and 153 reviews. Marie said: A book about a chair!It's about a chair! A house has burnt down and people have jobs and...
Chair for My Mother-Veritas Press, Inc.
Chair for My Mother Vera B. Williams Literature Grade 1 After a fire destroys their home and possessions, Rosa, her mother, and grandmother save and ...
A Chair for My Mother, Reading Rainbow Series, Vera B ...
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A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams Children's Book Review
A Chair For My Mother by Vera B. Williams A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams is the story of a young girl named Rosa, her hard-working mother, ...
