Indigo had been very concerned that anything was near her fiddle that she hadn’t put there. Looking at her violin, she knew immediately what her gift from Santa was. A brand-new case. No second-hand battered thing from Uncle John. Indigo approached her instrument slowly. The case was of crocodile skin, lined with white velvet. Plus, Hilda Effania had bought new rosin, new strings. Even cushioned the fiddle with cleaned raw wool. Indigo carried her new case with her fiddle outside to the stove where she found a music stand holding A Practical Method for Violin by Nicolas Laoureux. “Oh, my. She’s right about that. Mama would be real mad if I never learned to read music.” Indigo looked thru the pages, understanding nothing. Whenever she was dealing with something she didn’t understand, she made it her business to learn. With great difficulty, she carried her fiddle, music stand, & music book into the house. Up behind the wine glasses that Hilda Effania rarely used, but dusted regularly, was a garnet bracelet from the memory of her father. Indigo figured the bracelet weighed so little, she would definitely be able to wear it every time she played her fiddle. Actually, she could wear it while conversing with the Moon.

Hilda Effania decided to chance fate & spend the rest of the morning in her fancy garb from Cypress. The girls were silent when she entered the parlor in black lace. She looked like she did in those hazy photos from before they were born. Indigo rushed over to the easy chair & straightened the pillows.

“Mama, I have my present for you.” Hilda Effania swallowed hard. There was no telling what Indigo might bring her.

“Well, Sweetheart. I’m eager for it. I’m excited, too.”

Indigo opened her new violin case, took out her violin, made motions of tuning it (which she’d already done). In a terribly still moment, she began “My Buddy,” Hilda Effania’s mother’s favorite song. At the end, she bowed to her mother. Her sisters applauded.

Sassafrass gave her mother two things: a woven hanging of twined ikat using jute and raffia, called “You Know Where We Came From, Mama”; & six amethysts with holes drilled thru, for her mother’s creative weaving.

“Mama, you’ve gotta promise me you won’t have a bracelet, or a ring or something made from them. Those are for your very own pieces.” Sassafrass wanted her mother to experience weaving as an expression of herself, not as something the family did for Miz Fitzhugh. Hilda Effania was still trying to figure out where in the devil she could put this “hanging,” as Sassafrass called it.

“Oh, no dear. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything with these stones but what you intended.”