Saturday evening, the corset, and a "bissel* schnaps"

B"H, 

The Corset

My Bubbe* Pheema would stay with us every Saturday night.  Mom and Dad would go out.  Sometimes Cousin Dalyah would join my sister Rina and me.  I remember a moment in the evening while we were getting ready for bed.  I was already in my nightgown.  Bubbe Pheema was changing for the evening, too.  She had taken off her dress.  We were standing near the closet because she was placing the garment carefully on a sculpted wooden hanger.  In the next few seconds she would have the whole thing, hanger and dress, nicely situated in the closet for the night.  Then the most amazing transformation occurred.  Bubbe Pheema began to undo her corset (see Short history of Corsets).  It was a magnificent garment made by her very hands.
 Stays for the sides, hooks and eyes in  the front and smooth broad shoulder straps that fit like a glove.  Well, maybe not like gloves that lay flat until the hand enters into them.  Perhaps, more like a mold.  This undergarment could stand on its own which is exactly what it did once Bubbe Pheema finished undoing each of the forty-nine hook-and-eye partners.  Her soft warm bosoms and belly poured downward as she opened and removed the corset.  These were the shapes and textures of comfort.  The stern, rigid perfection of the daytime hourglass figure offered kindness and patience, but nothing like the warmth between the matured breasts and the belly skin stretched ten times.  There were scars to trace from the pupik*, up, down, and all around.  Other lines showed on her legs and back.  I touched them all as I marvelled at their silkiness.  And there, my memory closes.  I can see her nightgown and her long white braid falling over her shoulder.  Then nothing more but the waves in my dream.  Every night a dream passed me safely through the darkness to the dawn.  Always there were waves.

Every Saturday evening Bubbe Pheema offered me a shot glass of her peach brandy.  Was I schicker*?

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*Dictionary:


bissel - Yiddish word for a little bit
Bubbe - Yiddish word for grandma
pupik - Yiddish word for belly button, navel, umbilicus
schicker - Yiddish word for drunk