Now that she's in college (at the tender age of 16) she wouldn't be caught dead in this coat, even if I didn't own its mate.
Yes, the coats are garish and crazy...and yes, we did get endless smiling comments that year we wore them.
But college girls wear hoodies in various shades of gray, defiantly denying their girlishness, preferring to blend into the rain and fog, pretending they never wore bright blooms in pretty tints of printemps.
Some day she'll try to persuade her own daughter to wear matching coats...and she'll recall an age when we still held hands as we went strolling through a bright, warm Northwest spring. But these two coats now go to find a new home -- probably at Value Village. I just hope some other mommy-daughter pair seizes on them with the same kind of gleeful grins they once brought us.
