MEMORY: Jacob Maarse - free luxury

I might live on a farm - scuttling around with chickens in the yard, hanging laundry on the line in bare feet, slopping leftovers onto the compost pile and digging up dandelions from between bricks in the walkway. I might be a cheapskate, a rustic, a bohemian wannabe. I might even romanticize all that for you, showing you just the right peeling paint on the porch floor but hiding the wrong chipped paint on the deck skirt. One looks "shabby chic," while the other just looks hillbilly. (How carefully and purposefully we blog.)

But while part of me wants rustic, frugal and simple, another part of me revels in luxury, through the eyes, fingertips, mouth. Paris kind of luxury. I am the first to argue that my life is full of luxury - of the "best" kind - ample feathers, weathered wood, fresh eggs and veggies and overflowing goodness and kindness are but a few, what Thoreau and Emerson might call "the art of living well" - but just humor me.

Jacob Maarse Florists in Pasadena, California was my second-hand luxury in a previous lifetime. We were in our twenties living in this neighboring city of LA, with a tiny toddler and a new baby. We had no money to spare. This would have been around 1982, it was Christmas, and in Pasadena that meant it was 70 degrees F (21 C) - poinsettias were growing as shrubs outdoors. It was the year we couldn't afford Christmas gifts, so friends loaned us their Playskool jungle gym for Lesley and Peter to climb on when they woke up Christmas morning.

One Saturday before Christmas I put on my nicest casual outfit, smoothed back my long wavy hair with a headband, left the babies in Don's expert hands, and escaped alone downtown for some holiday inspiration.

On display in Jacob Maarse were effusive dried flower arrangements as well as evergreen ones with red holly berries, silver candlesticks and frames, potpourris, bath salts and soaps, stiff linens with lace borders, red velvet ribbons and plaid pillows. The place smelled rich. The wood door frames were old but well hung. Older Pasadena money'd ladies floated through the store as they awaited a floral order. I tried not to feel out of place. I even worked up some courage to ask the florist who was artistically filling a dozen grapevine Christmas baskets who had ordered them? They were full of every good thing the store had to offer, and I imagined them to be worth at least $100 apiece - a fortune to me at the time. She replied, "Julie Andrews."

Julie Andrews. Suddenly all the floating women in the store looked just like her - aging gracefully (she was only 47 then, but I was 20 years younger!), smooth, simple hair around a pretty face, and modest but fine clothes only a woman with old money would wear.

I stared at those copious gift baskets and - in spite of my own personal lack of means - felt that something was right in the world. A successful woman remembered her friends at Christmas by sending a basket of luxury. Would I have liked to be one of the recipients?

Maybe in a way, I was. I received the visual exuberance and generosity and still carry it in my heart and mind 27 years later.