The hostress gift

The hostess gift for my friend in Toulouse whom I was spending the weekend with was a puzzle. My first thought was a specialty coffee bean because I knew she had an old-fashioned, hand-cranked coffee grinder, but I opted for a geometric necklace made of nacre.

“How do you know she will like it?” my girl friend who owns the shop where I bought it asked. I felt it.

My friend picked me up at the train station. I was wearing my beige skirt with the multi level hem, black sweater and black boots. As if we planned it, she was wearing beige pants that grazed the top of her black calf-high boots and a black sweater.

When she opened her gift she laughed and disappeared upstairs. She came back down wearing the necklace AND the matching earrings her daughter, the person I think of as my French daughter, had given her for Christmas. The jewellery matched our unplanned uniform.