Brides and other women

In Twee Riviere there lives a young woman who has a deep desire to create beauty. I have only known her for a year, but in that time she has been responsible for many displays and random and organized acts of delicate and delightful beauty.
To illustrate:

• towering chocolate cakes and muffins with her tell tale signature decorations of fresh flowers, ribbons and bows
• Candlelit dances (only glimpsed secretly through a sash window from the outside, whilst skulking in a dark, windswept garden!) with rafters trailing strings of beads and little flashing mirrors, held for all the young adults of the area
• Dance shows done by the little ones she taught, leading them through a beautiful world of fantasy dresses, and ribbons and bare fairy feet and pretty hair with bows
• Tea parties all in white, with spread tablecloths under apple trees , serving herbal teas and cupcakes, and all the ladies appearing like white sprites in the orchard
• herself quite dazzling in a purple embroidered evening gown of her own creation, as if set for a ball, a princess

We were invited to attend her latest special function. She was not alone in this, it being a joint venture with her bosom friend from the Kammanassie.
It was a modeling show and we arrived to seats set outside, under arches created from leaning Amish style scaffolding against the walls of the old stone house. These were, in turn, draped with lengths of flimsy white muslin. Orange carpets were laid down to become the catwalk. It was icy cold, snow topped the surrounding mountains and black clouds scuttled overhead. It was not raining though, and so we all settled down. Many folk from the surrounding farms, workers I mean, ladies only, had been invited.
The show commenced. It had a bridal theme. Young women in bridal outfits, ( a mothers dress, an aunts...) adapted, shortened. All had a sixties sort of theme, featuring little girls in frocks, hair neatly plaited, coronets of flowers, ribbons and leaves. Smiles flashed on little girls faces, showing no front teeth, white shoes too big on little brown feet - all charming.
All the gorgeous girls we know so well now had their moment, very Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffanys ( did they know that?), with gloves and cinched waists, elegance, elegance all.

I sat huddled, yes, cold but enchanted. I thought of how often women are not held in high esteem. I thought how unhappily women are often reduced to nothing by religion, alcoholism or chauvinism which is deeply rooted in belief systems.

Lately I have been doing some reading, mostly the Epistles, where much is said of that other bride. Us. And that first bride, Eve, and how much both were loved, are loved. How they, those brides, were taken out, as it were, first from that first Adam, and then from that second and final Adam.
How adored, how totally adored those brides were, are. So much so that One would die for her.

What romantic dreams all girls have, to be so adored, to be so dressed, veiled, beautiful, to be revealed only for that special man, that beloved one.
My heart ached there, on that icy porch, because I really think all girls are created to be adored. My prayers are only that they all will be - really, really loved one day by their husbands.

Oh to love and be loved!
What a beautiful show it was, created out of nothing.
And for afters, of cause, there were plates of the most pretty cupcakes, a gooey, yummy, scrummy pile of a sticky, cherries and cream pavlova, dainty flower biscuits with silver ball centers and cups of warm tea. Thank you girls.

Hannah and Tess - I salute you!