The Little Gold Ribbon

There are angels among us.

My grandmother Winnie Platts wore Youth Dew perfume every day.  She sometimes had more than one sleek bottle with the gold ribbon around its waist.  She would wait until she saw a newspaper ad alerting her that Estee Lauder was offering a free gift with purchase, and only then would she buy her perfume.  Every once and a while, I would get the makeup bag or the lipstick from that free gift handed down to me.  It would be used and worn, but I loved it so much, because there was something so special about a gift from my grandma and something so unique about the way she wore down that lipstick.

 

Near the end of my grandmother's life, my aunt Janice handed me the gold ribbon adorning the bottle of perfume sitting by the bedside and said, "Here. Put this in Rose's hair." It turns out, my grandma would use these ribbons in her own daughters' hair. I had never thought of doing that before, and suddenly I wanted so much to do just that. It's amazing how something so simple and seemingly unimportant can become so special and dear.

That little gold ribbon represents something much more to me than just a decoration on a bottle. It means my daughter will have a piece of her great grandmother, and it means my grandma will be with me and my Rose always.

A few weeks later my mother gave me another gold ribbon, so my Rose could wear her signature pigtails with beautiful gold ribbons that held a faint scent of my Granny, and the day I finally put those two bows in my daughter's hair, I knew the angels were smiling.

When my grandma passed away, the scent of her perfume lingered for months. I could smell it all over my mother's house, and sometimes I thought I could smell it at my house too. It made me feel like she was there, an angel in my presence.  And since I've always said that Rose is my angel, now I'm certain I have more than one.