The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: TROPHY

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?
For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This (final!) month's prompts are train, trophy, typewriter, umbrella, Vietnam, war, washing machine, widow, window.

TROPHY
My sister was a pageant queen and collected LOTS of trophies. I wasn't, and didn't, although a few did come into my life. I received a few for school performance, and once, when I joined my sister for a pageant, I brought home a runner-up trophy along with a tiara. I don't really remember getting the trophy, but I do remember the pageant. We were required to compete in 3 different sections, so my mom created 3 different outfits for me. One was a royal blue pant suit. Another was a lavender church dress to wear while I played a piece on the piano (Homecoming by Hagood Hardy, which I got caught in the middle of, and couldn't find my way out for a minute! I don't think the audience noticed, but I sure did!). And of course there was a pageant dress. Mine was a soft pink with a hoop skirt – more like an antebellum costume than a glitzy pageant dress. But then I've always been a bit more homespun than glitz...