A Lesson In

I’m a long way today from 39th Street and Fifth Avenue, but my heart ached when I read about the closing of the famed landmark, the Lord and Taylor flagship store in NYC.

It would be untrue to say I have memories of shopping there as a young woman. That would be totally inaccurate.

Rather my memories go back to what were later remembered as The Depression years. My sister and I were far too young to realize the impact of the downhill turn of the economy, and my parents never discussed finances in our presence.

My Mother did not have the reputation of being the neighborhood seer or “wise woman.” No, she was quite private, inclined more to be courteous but remote, except with family. Mom kept busy managing both our household and her Patriarch’s along with a part-time job, and Dad was the one who told us the fairy tales and took us to the zoo.

However, in her own manner, Mom taught both my sister and I how to dream. Sunday evenings when the tourists had left the famed Fifth Avenue strip, we took our “walks.”

I treasured those excursions even more than the annual afternoon at Ringling Bros. Circus in Madison Garden. Our walks never included stops for ice cream or any other refreshment. However, they brought us from one fairyland window to another as we walked downtown from 58th Street to the corner of 34th and Fifth ending at another now gone edifice, once the home of B. Altman’s luxury filled Department store.

We never bought anything. The stores in those years were closed on Sunday, and it was inconsequential. There was no money for the extravagant, but gorgeous garments featured in each of the windows where we stopped and gazed with admiration.

Instead both my sister and I were being taught a valuable lesson that I don’t believe either of us have ever forgotten. Mom showed us how to appreciate beauty without envy, and look for it wherever our road would take us.

Now the last of the era, Lord and Taylors will close, and I wonder where other little girls will be taught to dream about one day dressing like a princess.

I don’t think that is available on the Internet. At least, not yet.