Hand-Me-Down Mink

This pic is easily at least 10 years old. I long ago lost the hat — the only one that ever looked half-decent on me — and last week I did a thorough cleaning job behind the washer and dryer (a son’s donation, stored against our future need, in spite of my professed preference for a top loader when next a washing machine is purchased and this one is not) taking up space in the porch, in hopes that the perfect hat had fallen between them and the wall. Alas, no. Because the hat suited me so well, it was perfect for the Bad Hair days and if ever I find another like it, I’ll pay any price. Currently having many Bad Hair days; due for a cut, and reduced to pinning the mop off my face with pins.

Again this winter I did not wear my fur coat.

Aunt Jean would be irked. But only a little. She was a tolerant and understanding person.
“If you want it, it’s yours,” she said, as it was now too large on her little-old-lady frame. “But wear it. Don’t leave it hanging in the closet.”
She’d bought it for herself, a luxury, at a time when wearing fur was not the faux pas it is now.
It would be a luxury for me too; even now, when I try not to buy anything with fur, I wouldn’t spend that kind of money.
I bet she saved for some time before making that purchase.

It’s a knee-length mink, as weightless and warm as sunlight.

I have taken a little bit of flack for wearing the coat. A stranger glared at me in a restaurant but said nothing. A pair of cattle ranchers spoke up; they didn’t think it was right to raise animals for their fur. To their statement that it’s right to raise animals for their meat because food is a necessity, I replied that a majority of the world’s population doesn’t eat beef, so … think on.

And I believe that. Beef isn’t a necessity.
Neither are fur coats unless you live in the far north. 
Which I don’t. Or do, depending on where you’re located on the world map. 

Call me a hypocrite if you will, but the coat was a gift from someone dear to me who worked long and hard for it. I own it and wear it (when the occasion suits and that is almost never, which is why I mean to start wearing it anyway) in memory of her and in appreciation of the generosity and caring she showed me all my life, till she passed away suddenly, within months of the death of her eldest niece (Mom) and methinks hastened because of it. Aunt Jean was in her nineties, that’s true … but she was a champion of all her nieces and nephews and their children, and she and Mom were close.

Probably should take the coat out of the bag in the closet and take a picture of it. Just a minute.

Here we go. Note the fashion ensemble including pyjamas and slippers.

How bad is that. I even left a pocket turned out. Tsk.