7QTF: Snapshots of Boys to Men (Not to Be Confused with Boyz II Men)

I'm a little late to the 7 Quick Takes Friday party--but on Friday, I spent most of the day traveling down to VA to attend a bridal shower for son #4's lovely fiancée.  Before I left, very, very early in the a.m., I published a post I had all ready to go in my "drafts" pile, so that my husband wouldn't be disappointed when he checked later on to see if I'd blogged that day.  (It was bad enough that I had gone off and left him for the weekend [sniff, sniff]; the least I could do was to make sure he had that link between us that he looks forward to whenever we're apart.)  But I was really hoping to link up with the Takers over at Jen's as well.  So here I am, a few days late and mucho dollars short.

-1-



Two of my sons (#3 and #4) live together down in VA.  Well, actually they no longer live together, because son #3 got married in December and he now shares a cozy little apartment on the grounds of the UVA campus with his beautiful new bride, Preciosa.  But until that happened, for the past couple of years the boys shared first a condo and then a house owned by their aunt.  Son #4 is still in the house, which he is now sharing with both of the brothers' big old lovable mutts...and a whole lot of dog hair.  When she heard I was coming to the shower, my sister-in-law invited me to stay with her a few doors down from my boy; but when I arrived, I was touched to see that he'd washed some sheets just for me, to put on the double bed in what used to be the master bedroom where his older brother slept when they were bachelor pad-dwellers together.  So he had clean sheets ready, and plenty of K-cups for the Keurig--so of course I decided to stay with my son.  How could I resist an invitation like that--especially when I know that although he rarely changes the sheets on the bed he shares with the two dogs, he had changed them for me?  That, my fellow moms, is an offer that is much too good to refuse.

This is the way my two VA boys look now (in a photo take on December 7, when son #4 on the left was best man at his older brother's wedding): they are strapping lads, well over 6 feet tall, with smiles that melt this mother's heart.

-2-

But their smiles always did melt me.  When I was down there staying at my son's place in VA, I came across a little photo album I'd made for son #3 years ago, and I grew very nostalgic flipping through its pages.  Let me show you these two boys (now men), in grainy snapshots from the pre-digital camera age.  They were always the best of buddies growing up, as you'll be able to plainly see.



That's son #3 on the right in this photo from 1988, the day we brought his baby brother home from the hospital.  While our oldest (who was 4) admired and patted the new baby softly, our 21-month-old mama's boy wasn't so sure about the whole thing.  Not sure at all.  But it didn't take long before his father and I were calling him and the new addition "Frick and Frack," because they were so inseparable.

-3-

Six months later, here are the besties.  This one kills me.  Not long after this photo was taken in the summer of 1988, son #4 (who was almost 11 pounds and over 2 feet in length at birth) weighed the same as his lanky older brother.

 



-4-

Fast forward to 1990.  Where one goes, the other follows.

Is it me, or are little boys with mussy hair the cutest things ever?

-5-

Here's a winner from Christmas 1990.  Some might say these two look like they were dressed for an "ugly sweater" party.  But I say is it me, or are little boys dressed up to go to their older brothers' school Christmas concert the cutest things ever?  A dapper duo they were, indeed.



-6-

This 1991 shot absolutely cracks me up.  Son #3 (right) was 5 years old and his little sidekick was about 3-and-a-half, and they were champing at the bit to follow in their older brothers' footsteps and go to school.  I got them these backpacks when I went back-to-school shopping for sons #1 and #2, and they dutifully carried their toys and other essentials around in them, happy as clams to be like the "big guys."

 



-7-

These two boys were always there for each other, for every milestone and significant event in each other's lives.  Here they are in 1993, celebrating son #3's 7th birthday.



And they continue to be there for each other now that they're men--as the first photo up there illustrates.

[Sigh...]  [Deep sigh...]

Thanks for indulging me, dear readers, while I took that little stroll down my favorite street, Memory Lane.  I probably do this sort of thing a bit too often on this blog.  But I am one of the few Catholic "mom bloggers" that I've come across in my cyber-travels whose children are all grown-up and out on their own, so I suppose that gives me a different perspective to share.  I think, however, that sometimes I sound somewhat maudlin when I reminisce, and if so I must apologize.  I don't want any readers who are currently wrangling toddlers and nursing precious newborns to dread the passing of time and be obsessed with the idea that before they know it, their babies won't be babies anymore.  Because although that's true (as you may have heard, time does fly!), there is much more to rejoice about when you witness this circle-of-life phenomenon than there is to lament.  All I have to do to remind myself that trying to stop the clock would be the worst thing in the world is to think about the boy-now-man who washed sheets for me this weekend, hoping I would be a guest in his house, and his best friend, the boy-now-man who is at once a doting son and a doting husband.  All I have to do is to look at the picture up there in Take #1, and I realize how very abundantly I have been blessed!

Now head on over to Jen's for more Quick Takes--from bloggers who got theirs posted in a timelier fashion than I did.









Guest Posting at "Footprints on My Heart"

I recently received an e-mail from my young blogging friend Sarah Therese of "Footprints on My Heart."  Her college chaplain (I told you she was young!) recently commented that "Saints have Saints who are friends," and that inspired her to invite her blogging friends to share their stories about their devotion to their favorite saints on her blog.  When I received that e-mail, I was very excited to participate.  If there's one subject I never get tired of, it's the saints and what they can teach us.

So here's that post, which I was honored to share over at my friend's lovely blog.

My Special Friend, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

It's funny how sometimes you feel an instant connection with one of the saints.  There are obviously no wrong choices among them when it comes to "favorites," or to those of God's elect for whom we feel some sort of special kinship and affection.  The saints all have different strengths--because they were just people first, ordinary human beings who through extraordinary grace and perseverance achieved great heights--and thus they can help us in different ways.  Of course, we should love them all.  But because we're human, we can't help but have our favorites among them.

Recently, my husband and I were visiting with one of our sisters-in-law, and she was talking about her great devotion to St. Joseph, to whom she has prayed unceasingly for her family's various special intentions.  (Me, too, I thought; I love St. Joseph!  I don't think I've ever boarded an airplane without having a St. Joseph prayer card in my purse and taking it out to say the Unfailing Petition to this powerful patron of families during take-off.)  Then we took a little shopping trip to TJ Maxx, and in the jewelry case there were some beautiful holy medals depicting St. Michael.  My sister-in-law commented that she was looking for a St. Michael medal to give to one of her daughters, who just loves the warrior saint.  (Me, too, I thought; I love St. Michael!  My husband and I always say a prayer to him at the conclusion of our daily Rosaries, knowing how powerful he is in fighting the forces of sin and evil in this fallen world of ours.)  Indeed, for every individual and for every individual need, there is a saint.

I have my favorites among them, like everyone.  One special saint friend is St. Therese of Lisieux, whose story spoke to me, touched me, and inspired me.  When I read her autobiography The Story of a Soul many years ago, I felt an instant connection, and she has long been one of my go-to saints when I feel the need for some serious Heavenly aid.  St. Catherine Laboure is another special friend of mine among the saints, because I always wear a Miraculous Medal.  St. Catherine Laboure is the one to whom Mary appeared and gave the design for this medal, and thus she is the one who is responsible for the spread of its devotion.  These two saints ended up sending me an amazing sign of their support at a really crucial time in my life--but that is a story for my next "Footprints on My Heart" post.  Because today, I want to talk about a saint who is not nearly as well-known, a rather obscure young man whose life story jumped out at me from the pages of a rather obscure book and took up residence in my soul.

One day about 12 or 13 years ago, I was flipping through Ann Ball's Faces of Holiness, Modern Saints in Photos and Words (one of the many Catholic works that crowd our shelves), stopping to read the sections that interested me.  This book is filled with short chapters that tell about the lives of different Saints, Blesseds, and Venerables--as well as some people who lived lives of extreme holiness, but whose causes for canonization have not yet begun.  I love to read about modern individuals--average Joes, lay people, married women--who have found the path to sainthood.  It gives me such hope.

It was by reading Faces of Holiness that I first became acquainted with Gianna Molla, who at the time was a Blessed but is now a canonized Saint.  Her story definitely resonated with me.  But I think the whole reason I was drawn to that particular book in the first place was so that I would find Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, whose name was completely foreign to me at the time.  I read pages 213-219 (a short synopsis of his heroic life and untimely death), and I was blown away by this handsome young man from Turin, Italy, who died in 1925 but whose body remains incorrupt.  He was for all intents and purposes a "normal" guy: good-looking, fun-loving, athletic; a practical joker who was always surrounded by friends; a student who struggled academically and was a bit of a disappointment to his parents.  He was extremely devout, however, a trait not shared by the rest of his family members, and he was especially devoted to Our Blessed Mother.  He also had a secret life: born into wealth, he gave almost all he had away to the poor (and his family did not even know the extent of his charity until after his death--when it was revealed that unbeknownst to them, there'd been a saint living among them).  I'm not even sure why the combination of photos and words in that book hit me the way they did, but I felt as if I knew him, as strange as that sounds--and I wanted to know more.

Before long I had ordered and read My Brother Pier Giorgio, His Last Days, a memoir written by his sister Luciana that chronicles his last week on earth--his "passion" and tragic death at 24.  It remains one of the most re-read tomes in my personal library, and if you're interested in reading a review I wrote for this wonderful book, click here.  After that, I got my hands on Luciana's other book, a biography titled A Man of the Beatitudes (which I had my youngest son read in 8th grade when we were homeschooling him; because--like JP II, who named him the Patron of World Youth Day in 2000--I can't think of a better role model for a young man to emulate).  It, too, is well-worth the time.  If you haven't heard of this extraordinary young man, or if you haven't read much about him, I highly recommend these two books.  His life story is utterly fascinating and inspiring, and if you do get to know Pier Giorgio better, I believe there's a very good chance that he will become a special friend of yours among the saints.

I admire this young man so much that I had to include him in my novel Finding Grace.  My shy little heroine, Grace Kelly, who is determined to achieve the goal of sainthood while living in the world, is "introduced" to Pier Giorgio (I won't tell you how--you'll have to read the book to find out!), and she becomes enchanted with him to the point of having a bit of a crush, even though he's been long dead.  I had to figure out a way to work some Italian immigrant characters into the novel so that there could be a personal connection between them and this saintly Italian boy, because the story is set in the 1970's and my research efforts failed to turn up the titles of any books that Grace could have read at that time to learn about him.  It took some finagling to figure out a way to have her "meet" him, but it was worth it to me.  I was determined that Pier Giorgio Frassati would be one the many saints whose life is an inspiration to Grace as she struggles to find and stay on the path to sainthood.

I can imagine that I, too, might have felt like Grace about him--if at 15 I hadn't yet met the true man of my dreams: the boy who would become my husband, the boy who made crushes on other males forever a thing of the past for me (and the boy who was my main inspiration for the character of Grace's love interest, Tom Buckley).  And I think if more young girls would ignore the Justin Beebers of the world and swoon instead over men like Pier Giorgio Frassati--men of exemplary character, moral fortitude, and deep faith--there would be a lot fewer heartaches.

 I have yet to receive any special sign from this special friend of mine, and yet I feel a deep bond.  I urge you to learn more about this holy young man who will one day be numbered among the saints.  (This link is a good start, if you'd like to read about him.)

This photo of Pier Giorgio scaling a high mountain is representative of his earthly life, which was a constant striving to reach the goal, the summit: eternal life in Heaven.  The caption he wrote on it is quite apropos--"Verso l'alto" (Toward the top).  With the help of saints like him and so many others, may we also reach the summit.

(This guest post appeared over at "Footprints on My Heart" today--thanks, Sarah Therese, for letting me share it with your readers!)



Once a Mother, Always a Mother

When I watched the long-awaited first episode of Season 4 of "Downton Abbey" the other night (hey, have you heard of this show--ha ha!), I really pitied Isobel Crawley when she talked about how lost she was in the wake of her son Matthew's death.  She said something along the lines of, "You see, when you're a mother and your only child dies, then you're not a mother anymore.  You're nothing.  And I'm having trouble getting used to that."

Wrong, Isobel.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  I feel so incredibly sorry for you (and I'm so bummed that Matthew is off the show!); but you are still wrong.  Because once a mother, always a mother.  You can't hug and kiss him anymore, Mrs. Crawley, and you'll miss him all the days of your life; but his soul lives on, and the love between a mother and son survives even death.

I have been struggling myself the past few years, trying to get used to the idea that the caretaking part of my mothering job is coming to an end.  I have always been a stay-at-home mom, happiest when I'm feathering my nest and feeding the chicks in it.  But the time came when they started to fly the coop, one by one, first leaving for college, and then heading out into the working world.  Now two of my boys are married and a third will be tying the knot in February.   My youngest son will become an official adult when he celebrates his 21st birthday in a few weeks.  When he graduates from the University of Notre Dame in May of 2015, my career--my life's work--will be completed.

Or will it?  Does a mother ever stop worrying about her children--and doing whatever she can for them--no matter how old they get?

No, she doesn't.  I know this from experience now.

Moms, don't listen to Isobel.  She'll always be Matthew's mother.  I know that even if God had only blessed me with one son, instead of five (my cup runneth over!), and that son had preceded me to Heaven, I would still be a mother.

There are wonderful moments in store for you, mothers of young children.  They will become independent, they will move away, they will start families of their own.  But there will be incredibly joyful experiences to enjoy with them in the future, such as mother-son dances (like this one with my firstborn son at his wedding in 2009), where you will shed tears of joy while dancing in the arms of the little boy you raised, the man who has become a husband to a new daughter.



There will still be heart-melting hugs and kisses like this (from son #2, who was the best man at his older brother's wedding).

It's bittersweet, seeing them grow up.  Believe me, there are moments when I look back at the days when my husband and I had five little boys living under our roof and eating dinner with us every night, when our home was filled with noise and chaos and laughter, and my heart feels heavy with the weight of missing their constant presence in our lives.  The walls of our home are plastered with pictures of their beloved faces.

But if they'd never grown up, I wouldn't have the joy of knowing them as the amazing men they are today.

If they'd never grown up, I wouldn't have had the chance to become a grandmother--and now that I have three absolutely precious little granddaughters, I can't imagine my life without them in it.

So now I'll not only be forever a mother; I'll be forever a grandmother, too (lucky me!).



The Strange and Wonderful World of Blogging

When my husband asked me if I'd blogged yesterday, shortly before it was time to go to beddy-bye, I sheepishly had to answer in the not-affirmative.  Which is becoming much more common these days, as I struggle to figure out what (if anything!) I have to share that's worth your precious time.  I want you to want to stop by, I do; and I want to have something amusing or enlightening or interesting to tell you.

While I was procrastinating this morning (not quite ready to work on a blog post of my own), I stopped by Colleen's Martin Family Moments, a great site if you haven't found it yet, and was amused by the "Blogger's Prayer" on her home page.  I hope she doesn't mind if I share it with you here at String of Pearls.  It is so clever...and so true. 

THE BLOGGERS PRAYER

Lord help me to learn to spell without spellcheck, manage to visit all that visit me,
and post regularly--all in 5 minutes a day, so that I can clean house and take care of my family.

Help me to not look at every occurrence in my life as a blog post,
and to quit taking pictures of weird things to share as well.

Please Lord, help me to stop talking about my blog friends as though they are next door neighbors or someone I have known all of my life.

And help me dear Lord, to think of something witty and wise to post tomorrow.

~The Dust Bunny Hostage

One of the reasons I procrastinate when it comes to working on new blog posts is that I love to read the blogs of others--and that not only takes up time, but it also eats away at my confidence, because I realize how much wittier and wiser so many of the bloggers out there are.  And how many loyal followers they have.  I will never be a Colleen Martin.  Or a Grace.  (If you're a blogger and you're reading this, I don't even have to add Grace's last name, because you know I'm talking about the comic genius behind Camp Patton.) 

If you haven't found the blogs of these uber-talented gals yet, you should head over and check them out.  (I'll wait for you.  I'll be here when you come back.)

Sometimes I think I was a better blogger back in the beginning, when I was fresh and full of ideas and I would jump out of bed each day, anxious to post something before most people go to work in the morning.  Back in those good old days, I had absolutely no expectations of gaining any followers--other than the handful of family members who would tell me that reading my ramblings was something they liked to do while they drank their morning coffee...and I'm definitely disappointing them these days, aren't I?  Because if I do get a post up at all, it's more likely to be long after the last cup of coffee (or bowl of oatmeal) has been consumed.

"Bear, let's get out our laptops and see what's going on in the blog world, shall we?"

Don't get me wrong, I still love blogging.  And I still have no expectations of gaining a big following, because that was really never my purpose when I set this thing up almost three years ago.  I started this blog to record memories for my family and to have a writing outlet that would feed my need to rearrange words and play around with them until they sound the way I want them to.  The fact that people who aren't related to me stop by every now and then and leave the kindest comments has been an unexpected bonus.  The fact that I have connected with other bloggers and corresponded with them so frequently that I feel like they are my friends (at least as much as any pen pal would have been in days of yore) is another amazing bonus.  I have come to realize that it's a very small Catholic blogging world; the longer you inhabit that universe, the more you see the same names pop up.  So blogging has become a way for me to feel a part of something so much bigger than myself--to play my own small role in the new evangelization being brought about by Catholic women bloggers.

So I'm here to stay (for the foreseeable future, anyway).  I'll share family anecdotes and photos; I'll tell you which books and movies I enjoy; I'll promote the Catholic Faith, in all its beauty (to the best of my ability);  I'll post the occasional recipe, or a work of art that speaks to me (and vintage art always seems to speak the loudest)...

Love, love, love this!

The whole blogging thing is a bit strange--I mean, as Colleen's "Bloggers Prayer" points out, we bloggers tend to take pictures of weird things that might be post-worthy later on, and to think of every occurrence as a blog post; but if so, I guess I just have to admit that I'm a bit strange.  Because I like having my own little spot in the blog world, and I'm not ready to vacate it just yet.

I'm a Twitter-er (or a Twit?); That is, I Tweet

Encouraged by my new blogging friend Christina (who writes at Filling My Prayer Closet), I have just set up a Twitter account and posted three tweets.  When I giddily told my husband this latest development, he said, "Who ARE you?" 

He's a bit of a n00b when it comes to the Twitter-verse, so I believe he meant to say "#Who ARE you?"

I know, I know--this is crazy.  If you come here often, you know I'm really old-fashioned and old school, and just plain...old.  I can barely figure out how to keep my computer up and running properly, and when the least little snag comes up, I'm essentially paralyzed and I cry out for help from my husband, the most patient, efficient, and underpaid IT specialist in the world.  And yet I thought I should go ahead and set up a Twitter account.  Go figure.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter...where will it end?  I have dived headlong into the world of modern technology (belly-flopped, more accurately), and I don't know where it will lead.  I am cautiously optimistic that it might give my novel Finding Grace just the eensiest more visibility than it has now.

So, readers, if you're on Twitter, look for me there (I'm Laura Pearl @ finding_grace_).  #You guys are the best!

That ABC Book for Grammy's Darlings...It's Coming Along (The Letter D, Pages 7 and 8)

Quite a while back, I blogged about an ABC picture book that I was working on for my twin granddaughters.  It was one that I'd begun when my youngest son was a baby, but I'd abandoned it for almost twenty years, with just a handful of pages completed.  Inspired by the arrival of my little sweetie pies in June of 2011, I started working on it once again.  My goal was to complete it, with two pages of pictures for each letter of the alphabet, in time to give it to them as a birthday present when they turned one.  (Chuckle.  First deadline not met.)  Then I thought I'd give it as a present on their second Christmas in 2012.  (Laugh.  Another deadline came and went.)  A new baby sister arrived for the twins in February of 2013, giving me even more impetus to complete the book, and I was determined that it would be done in time for the twins' second birthday last June...Uhh, nope.  Christmas 2013?  Nope again.

Okay, folks, the new deadline is the twins' third birthday in June of 2014.  And this time I mean it!  If I don't hurry, they're going to outgrow their love for ABC picture books before I ever finish it!

The A's (pages 1 and 2) have been completed for a long time now, as well as the B's (pages 3 and 4).  And I just yesterday finally finished the D's.  (Yes, I do know that C comes before D--but I was just overly excited to get to the D's because of the DINOSAUR.  Obviously.)

So pages 5 and 6 are coming soon (let's hope, anyway).  But here is page 7:

And here is page 8:

Way back when I was newly married and my only child was a female half Black Lab-half Golden Retriever named Shamus, I submitted some children's books I'd worked on to a publisher for consideration.  Their rejections were swift but kind.  This time around, I have no illusions about seeing this work published.  It's enough of a miracle that Finding Grace is really in print, and not just stacks of 8 and1/2 by 11-inch pages that I've run off using my home printer and handed out to family members (which was my plan at the outset)--that alone is more that I could have ever hoped for. 

So no more rejection letters for Grammy.  Instead, I'm going to have my baby sister, who is a genius at putting together hardcover memory books using Shutterfly, walk me through the process so I can run off copies of this ABC book for all of my grandkids.  I've never used Shutterfly, but I think it's amazing how professional their products look!

And before I sign off, here's a quick shout-out for Finding Grace (because I've been encouraged by my publisher to keep plugging away at promoting it).  This article, calling it one of the "best books you haven't read" and announcing the newly lowered Kindle price, was posted on The Association of Catholic Women Bloggers website today.

Now off to tackle the C's!

What I Wore Sunday (Not THIS Sunday, But I Will Wear It Some Other Sunday)

I haven't joined the faith-filled fashionistas over at Fine Linen and Purple for quite some time...but I've got something to show you that is so perfect for wearing to church on Sunday, and it's even purple!  I thought that was a sign that it was time to link up again!

Here I am modeling one of my favorite Christmas gifts of 2013 (given to me by my very favorite person--who also happens to be my beloved husband, the excellent father of my five sons, and my happy partner in the grandest of all adventures, grandparenthood).

This would have been a perfect veil to wear during the Advent season, when the color would have been liturgically appropriate.  In fact, there were a number of bloggers who were participating in a veiling link-up in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but I never did end up joining in.  If I'd had this glorious purple number back then, I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to help myself.

Isn't this the most beautiful lace mantilla ever?  I absolutely love it (and will be sure to wear it during Lent, when it will again be liturgically apropos).  Here's a side view, showing the wonderfully intricate details of the Spanish lace.

I did give my husband some not-so-subtle hints about what I really wanted for Christmas.  I pointed out to him the different styles (some French, some Spanish) of lace mantillas I liked on the Veils by Lily website, and several colors I preferred.  Then I left it up to him to pick out a style and color, so that it wouldn't be the usual "Hey, look what you got me!" routine.  I wanted him to be the one to make the final choice.  (This one is called "Spanish Floral," Item #LE16, and it comes in black, black and silver metallic, black and gray, white, off-white, gray, navy, and wine purple.)

I have been veiling for almost five years now, after spending about five years before that trying to decide if I had the nerve to do it.  I have to believe that the Holy Spirit was prodding me until I gave in, because I fought it and fought it, yet couldn't shake the feeling that I was supposed to start wearing a veil.  I worried about standing out, or being different, or calling attention to myself (something that goes very much against the grain of my shy and reserved personality).  For those five years, I would periodically look at ads I'd cut out of a Catholic newspaper called The Wanderer--admiring the veiled models and wondering if I should go on one of those websites and call in an order, but always chickening out in the end.   But quotes like this one, found on the Veils by Lily website, kept speaking to me in an ever louder and more insistent voice:

We veil as a sign of humility before God, and we do it anytime we find ourselves inside a Catholic church, where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in the tabernacle.

If you are thinking about beginning this beautiful devotion, remember that it is God before whom you wish to humble yourself. Like a religious habit, your veil is a public proclamation of your desire to submit to the will of God for your life, and of your commitment to answering the universal call to holiness and continual conversion. Your veil is also a sign of the great dignity inherent to a woman, who has the potential to receive life within herself... both human life and the supernatural life of God. This is an important message the world needs to hear, now more than ever!

I have gotten so used to wearing a veil now.  When I'm in my own parish, I am pretty much unaware of having that triangle of lace on my head.  I am one of only a small handful of women who cover their heads during Mass, but I know everyone is used to seeing me this way--and although it was difficult to start the practice, I am completely comfortable when on my home turf.  Sometimes when I'm away from home, however, veiling becomes an opportunity for me to practice humility and mortification.  For instance, about a year ago, when my husband and I were out at Notre Dame for a football weekend (and a visit with our youngest son, who is a student there), we ran into his old junior high girlfriend at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, right after Mass ended.  We were still in the church, visiting the room off the altar area that houses a large collection of saints' relics, so I was not able to remove my veil.  We had not seen this still-lovely former flame for about 40 years; she had gone to grade school with my husband but her family had moved away after our freshman year in high school--and not long after that school year ended, my husband and I had started dating.  All I could think when I saw her after all those years (shame on me!) was "Why couldn't we have run into her outside of the church, so I could look like a normal person?"  When I admitted my weak and prideful thoughts to my husband, he assured me that he was proud of me for having that veil on.  He loves to see me in a veil (and therefore, he thoroughly enjoyed picking out a new one for me as a gift).

I obviously married the right man.  And I think this Christmas, he chose the right veil for me.  I can hardly wait to have the opportunity to wear it.

Coincidentally, the dress I'm going to wear for my #4 son's wedding in February is dark purple, and I think this veil would look lovely with it...

No, I don't believe I'll do that.  I think at a wedding, the only woman wearing a beautiful lace veil should be the bride.  I'll probably end up wearing the same vintage black felt hat with a gross grain ribbon bow that I've worn to the weddings of sons #1 and #3.

I'll just go ahead and save this beauty for Lent!

Now head on over to FLAP for more fashion fun--in purple and other colors, too.