Hope Chest(s)

I wrote recently about my cousin Alberta giving me towels for my hope chest when I was a teenager. I didn't have a hope chest, I had a box. The box had a few home-made pot holders (I wrote about that earlier this month), a few linens pilfered from the chests I'm about to tell you about. And that was it.

I was recalling the house in Runnemede and in particular my room (and my sister's) and as I went around the room, visualizing it, I recalled that there was a "hope chest" at the foot of the bed, but pushed from the foot, to be against the wall, leaving a small walk-way between it and the bed.

It was a magical chest to me. And there was another one in the unheated attic room (which later became my room). Both chests were magical, and we (my sister, mother, and I) just loved to open them up and go through them just to look and see what was in them.

They were full of linens from my grandmother Drexler's home and from my Grandmother Drexler's mother's (the Casper influence). Mom would change out the house each season and would go into the chest to get linens to enhance her seasonal decor.

One of the most beautiful things in the chest was my great-grandmother Casper's wedding gown. It was complete with pantaloons and head piece for the veil. The veil was no longer present. I have the gown now. It was getting very ratty, and a member of our church who was working at the Philaldephia Museum of Art refurbished it and then placed it on display for a couple of years in the museum's Victorian display, before returning it in mint condition to my mom and dad.

The gown is beautiful, but who could wear it. The waist is only 18 inches! My mom wore it once to a costume party they had at church and even her diminutive figure was too large in the waist. So she jury-rigged it so that the gap was not very prominent.

The chest also contained a china doll. It was made of china, not made in China. It was beautiful and so very frail. We had to handle it very, very carefully for fear of breaking it or ruining the material on the costume. I think my sister has that doll now. I know I don't.

The chest in the other room (the attic) also held fascinating things, curtains with which we (my sister and I) could drape ourselves and pretend we were princesses.

They were magical chests, not hope chests, and we enjoyed the forays into them, albeit few and far between.