Pink

    Pink appeared when I was 12 years old. My first high-heels were pink, with little flowers running along the top.  They were light pink. Soft pink.  Baby pink. My first pair of nylons - Schiaparelli, from Best's department store in Seattle, came in a hot pink box, tucked in hot pink tissue paper.

    Baby pink, hot pink, my first ladies tea and my best friend, Gretchen. She came over to my house, so we could dress up together. Gretchen was in light green. I was in. . .pink.  A rose pink velveteen skirt, a light pink satin cotton blouse, baby pink high heels. Gretchen and I put on our coats and wobbled
down the front porch steps, to where my Dad was waiting to drive us to our first ladies tea.

    Mama belonged to one of those ladies clubs: Music and Art. When it was Mama's turn to entertain, the house would be glistening clean.  Fifteen or so Music and Art ladies would be looking their best. An array of colored suits and dresses.  Hats with feathers and veils. Rhinestone pins and imitation pearl
necklaces.  Real diamonds on their marriage finger.  It was like bouquets of rainbow-colored flowers squeezed into our small living room on Ruffner Street. They would be chatting politely, while anticipating the event — who would be speaking that afternoon or what the hostess would be serving.

    Our dining table was extended to display a cornucopia of deserts, with polished silver-plated coffee and teapot and the best china. "Hold the saucer up to the light." Mama would say. "If you can see the shadow of your hand through the porcelain, you know it's good china.”  We had quite a collection of those good china cups and saucers. They were waiting for me to grow up and get
married and have my own tea parties.

    European existentialism hadn't made it to the middle class in Seattle in the 1950's, so there weren't any big existential decisions. It was coffee or tea.  Cream or milk.  No skim, non-fat, 2% fat, or soymilk. No natural raw sugar, or Sweet & Low, or Extra, or Nutrasweet to complicate things. White sugar cubes sparkled in the sugar bowl and the shiny silver sugar tongs were ready to drop a cube or two into one's cup. No matter how careful, there was always a tiny splash that followed the sugar cane delivery. And if preferred, there was thinly sliced lemon for the tea. It was simple and splendid and... pink.

    Mama always made the sweets and cookies.  Sometimes I would help.  She would cut a homemade white cake into little squares and pour sugar milk-water over the tops to make a glaze. I decorated each tiny cake with a green leaf and a pink rose.  Petits fours. Oh, it was fancy when Mama spoke French.

    The afternoon would pass all too soon, but it was enough until the next time.  A pink afternoon would nestle in each lady's heart - a reminder that she was all that was feminine and dainty and cultured.  A pink afternoon to chase housewifely duties away and honor the Goddess of creativity and beauty.

    I would listen from my bedroom and sometimes walk amid the clusters of ladies, embarrassed but glad to hear praise for my little pink roses that crowned the petits fours. I was preparing, watching, waiting for the time when " pink" would be mine. To know the secrets of being feminine, of celebrating being “woman.”  In the meantime I was a pinklet in training.

    But as life would have it, I eventually moved to New York City.  Pink got lost in the shuffle.  I was an actress for awhile, which Mama didn't understand — and then for 30 years, a psychotherapist.  Mama really didn't catch on to that one at all.  Every time I went home to visit, she wanted me to put away
my New York black and wear the pink that she had sewn and kept for me.

    The holdout for pink in my life in New York City was my friend, Judith. We met in our first Broadway show in 1965. She was the hostess of the most wonderful tea party on the East Side in the late '60's, with her Mama there, and again, the hostess of the most wonderful ladies luncheon on the West Side, in
the early '90's, just before my Mama's passing. She gives tea parties still.

    All troubles slip away at Judith's, and one can be pink again. In her beautiful, spacious home, with her own art work on the wall, with real silver coffee and tea pots gleaming, real linen napkins, with yummy fancy sweets and every woman-friend dressed up real fine, I forget the cares of the world, if only for an afternoon.  I celebrate being a woman. I celebrate Mama and what she tried to teach me about being a lady.

For me, New York turned out to be black and red: the fast lane, divorce, competition, fractured dreams. Oh, Mama, how wise you were, that your favorite color was pink.

Re-printed with permission of TEA MAGAZINE