Ribbon Solutions

I have a simple solution to life’s stress.

Buy more ribbon.

I don’t know when my ribbon fetish began. Probably during childhood adventures with my grandmother, scouring second-hand stores and discount fabric stores for other people’s cast offs of useful items like zippers, buttons, and thread. The pay-off for restless granddaughters was a yard of any ribbon we chose, a real luxury in those days and an inspired bribe on Meme’s part, since choosing only one yard from so many colorful, temptations was certainly excruciatingly time consuming for young intellects.

I was reminded of our human tendency to prepare for life in odd ways recently when I uncovered the stash of ribbon I had collected in the months preceding my daughter’s wedding almost two years ago.

Like a squirrel hoards nuts, I had gathered spools of silky satin and shiny iridescent ribbon and hidden them away in an unmarked box just in case.

How having ribbon would prepare anyone for the transition of having your children grow up and begin families of their own is a quagmire of human illogic and dysfunction that only a professional psychologist could unravel.

All I know is, “You never know when the perfect ribbon will come in handy.”

Which reminds me of another motto, “Whoever has the most fabric when they die, wins.”

I have known women who built shelf-lined closets specifically to organize their addiction to fabric, justifying it with the words, “But I love to quilt.” And perhaps because they wanted to avoid trips to marriage counseling, their husbands seemed well-adjusted to this concept.

Or maybe those same husbands have a closet devoted to golf.

Like so many mid-lifers, I’m trading stuff for space these days; getting rid of the stuff and gaining room in my closets.

So, what to do with all this ribbon?

Well, the obvious thing, of course. Pass it along, with the fetish, to my oldest daughter, the artist.

And what she doesn’t want can be used to wrap up Christmas at our house this year.

I just hope my family and friends don’t become suspicious when the ribbon on their Christmas packages looks more wedding-ish than holiday-ish.

And I hope your holidays are wrapped and decorated with sweet family memories.

Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at http://checklistcharlie.blogspot.com.