Mark Knows It All

My mother loved catalogues. In fact, she was addicted to them. Beginning in August, she would get stacks of catalogues delivered daily much to the chagrin of the post office. On a light day, she would get ten in the mail. I won’t tell you how many on a heavy day. And she would buy something from almost all of them, which in turn resulted in more catalogues sent to her. As she got older, I would stop to visit her and literally move the catalogues from her mail box to my car to my trash can at home. It was a little scary. I am not a catalogue shopper except for food. I love food. But what is delivered never matches what is pictured and very expensive. So I threw what few catalogues I got out…except for one. Tucked midst the naked, writhing bodies of Abercrombie and Fitch and the glitz of the Neiman Marcus Christmas was an innocuous little catalogue with a different print and paper quality. Sometimes it would even be in black and white. It came from the Vermont Country Store and rapidly b...