A little story for my sister, Barbara, because my little stories put joy in her heart.

            The first Dressbarn retail store opened in February, 1962, on Broad Street, in Stamford, and provided wear-to-work dresses and clothing for the working woman during a time when they were entering the workforce in greater numbers.  I was three years old in ’62, so this held no importance to me.  However, by the time the after-college years hit, and I became a working woman, Dressbarn was the place to buy my wear-to-work dresses.  Bloomingdale’s down the street on Broad seduced me, too.

            I was married and living with my in-laws, Ralph and Theresa, when Dressbarn went out the window with the economy in the 1980s.  In the attic space of the vacant store, a German woman set up a warehouse shop to sell crystal ware.

            I don’t know how Theresa found out about this shop.  She convinced me to go to there with her on Saturdays.  She wanted to buy crystal wine glasses.  I didn’t want to go.  I wanted my Saturdays off to be by myself after a working woman’s week of work.  Couldn’t say no, didn’t know how to say no, just mad at myself for not doing what I wanted, yearning to get art on the page, a string of hopeful words on a page, to think and figure out who I am, waiting to be seduced by life, to be the woman I needed to be.

            So, downtown we go, to the Dressbarn building, climb a joyless, shadowy, narrow staircase, (where on earth is Theresa taking me?), to meet the German woman who sells crystal ware out of cardboard boxes on tall shelves in a high-windowed space of a dusky place.  Here, out of a box, come swirls of cranberry-colored glass of wine glasses, labeled Germany F.R. Theresienthal Handmade with a symbol of a crown. 

            I am seduced by crystal.

            And, I am seduced by the Theresienthal Cranberry with Optic Swirl of lovely glasses for years, as they highlight holidays and wonder from a diningroom sideboard in Theresa’s house. 

            “I’ll give the wine glasses to you one day,” said Theresa.

            Sadly, the glasses never come to me, and like broken glass, her promise is broken. Yet, do you know that hope lays next to heartbroken?

            I think of the wine glasses for years after the death of Theresa. 

            One day, I decide to search online and buy the same glasses for myself.  In my head, Theresa is with me as I search.  I am hopeful.  Turns out, I cannot find the wine glasses, yet I find matching champagne glasses, and now, here they are, in the sideboard in my house, waiting to be toasted to Theresa. 

            I think of Theresa and our crystal-buying days in downtown Stamford, as she built her collection, on my Saturdays off from work.  In my search, I find out that the Theresienthal glassworks, built in 1836, was named after Queen Therese, the wife of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria.  How appropriate, I think, to find this out now, decades after our Dressbarn attic jaunts.  So, Theresa the Queen, convinced me to go crystal-shopping with her, and unbeknownst to me at the time, this made me into the woman I needed to be.

            In the end, the heartbroken promise did not matter.  She loved me and I loved her.  I am seduced by the joy in my own heart.