The Butcher's on a Monday Morning

We've all read them.

You know, that thread that invariably and repeatedly pops up on perfume forums (POL, I'm looking at you)--about declining standards in dress and comportment, of our grandmothers and their immaculate makeup and tailored jackets, and oh, that perfume that fueled our young imaginations.

I've often been outspoken with my views on the comforts of slobbishness. I adore my sweatpants, I *love* my hoodie, and God help us all the day I start stumbling around in heels.

But on Monday, I saw Her.

At the butcher's case, in Shadyside Market,* buying chicken for stock to make homemade soup. She was impeccable, ivory-haired, coiffed, and powdered. Trim and upright, wearing a tailored tan coat, holding a small black purse. I could have sworn she was wearing pearls. Elegance personified. As she reached out for the wrapped chicken the butcher had wrapped for her, I heard a snippet of their conversation.

The butcher said, "I'll tell you what--think of all the people that have never had real soup. If it doesn't come frozen or from a can, they don't know it..."

And she said, "But I do so love to make it..."

(She said that, she really did! "But I do so love...")

They said their goodbyes, and it was my turn.

When I brought my pound of ground pork up to the register, the cashier looked out of the window, and said, "Wait, dear, I have to bring this bag to that lady out in her car."

When she came back, she looked out the window with a fond look and said, "Would you believe it, she's 93--that lady in the Cadillac. And she's dressed so perfectly! Dressed to the nines, just to go to the market."

I knew it was the lady buying the chicken for soup.

"I thought she looked beautiful," I said. And she DID! It wasn't just the clothing, it was her bearing, almost regal. At 93, to be so tailored, so perfectly manicured, so *elegant,* to stand so tall and yet be so slim and fragile looking (she couldn't have been taller than 5'3," by the way). To come to the local market to buy chicken...to MAKE SOUP FROM SCRATCH. Oh, what I would have given to be her granddaughter, eating her soup! To have grown up at her knee, playing at her vanity, trying on her pearls.

"If I could be like her at 93," the lady behind the counter said, "Still driving, and looking so nice."

I wasn't close enough to figure out whether she was wearing perfume, but I think I understand all you with the perfectly turned out grandmothers a bit more now. Goodness knows, I never had a perfectly coiffed grandmother. Perfume? Not in my family. I love refinement, but I myself am not refined. This was someone who had refinement in her very bones, who, I'm sure, was probably born smelling like a chypre.

*A note on Shadyside Market:

Like many of the establishments on Walnut Street, Shadyside Market caters to the very well off. It's a tiny little market, but with the most beautiful produce I've ever seen. A friend of mine calls it the "Perfect Fruit Store," after the beautiful display of fruit and produce in the window. Want currants that look like red rubies? go to Shadyside Market. Shadyside Market is old-school luxe. They'll even take your grocery list for you, pull the items off the shelf, pack, and deliver those items to your door. Their butcher will actual grind meat for you on the spot--a surprise to me (as I'm used to going to the local supermarket for my groceries--Schiller's Semi-Annual Perfume sale brought me into the neighborhood, and I figured, "why not just buy what you need here?") You pay a premium, of course, but then, you do the same at Whole Foods.