oh my galosh.

Letter I probably won’t send: “I dreamt you were in a band called ‘The Ooh Las’ with a boy named Peter and you played a huge New Years party. We ran into each other in line at a grocery store and were glad to see each other. I hope you are well.”

He collapsed on the way to the bathroom with a thud that shook the pictures of their grandchildren and caused the dust hidden in the white wool carpet to rise around him.  He didn’t have the strength to lift himself off the living room floor and she didn’t have the strength to lift her husband’s long bones off the living room floor, so the couple who’d spent the last twenty-four years in separate beds on separate floors curled up together, settling with the dust into the white wool carpet where they waited under fleece blankets like children in a sad, sad fort for morning and for their eldest daughter to open the door of their condo.  And when she arrived, her mother rose and with the help of her daughter, who was holding back tears at the sight of her proud and stoic and tall and stubborn and handsome father now bony and dying and lying on the floor of his living room, the two women hoisted him off the floor and set him back in his chair.

In May the war ended, her fiancé came home and she returned to Eau Claire, but with her she carried traces of Rodeo Drive; grains of sand from Malibu beaches stowed away in the pleats of her skirts.  She bore a polish that refused to give in to the casual comforts of small town style, a brilliance that wouldn’t yield to flannel.  To this day there’s an elegance about her, an effortless way that she puts herself together—classic but never stuffy—that holds an elusive simplicity, like the perfect little black dress; a style not often found in Northern Wisconsin.

“I thought my lips would turn red as I aged.” ~Dominique Browning

“I thought my lips would turn red as I aged.” ~Dominique Browning

“My mother was angry about me going to California.  She told me I’d be better off taking the money I’d saved and buying a mink scarf.  Those were the scarves that still had the heads and feet.  I stuck with California, and it’s still one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.  In less than ten years, no one was wearing those scarves.  They were completely out of style.”