My Very Best Favorite

In a film I watched years ago that I can’t remember the name of, John Malkovich chastises Andy McDowell when she responds to him about  approximately how many times something happened.  McDowell drawls, “Well, I guess about…” and Malkovich interrupts tersely, “About is already built into approximately!”, or something like that.  I thought of that exchange when a friend told me the other day that one of his sweetest memories of his little daughter was when she categorized so many things as being “My very best favorite”.  The double superlative charms him when he thinks of it even though his daughter is now long-grown.  Sometimes the innocent things children say stay with us in such endearing ways that we just can’t part company with the memory.

I’ve been thinking about My Very Best Favorite ever since and have taught my granddaughter to use the phrase whenever she talks excitedly about some new discovered delight.  “Is it your Very Best Favorite”?, I ask.  She has so many…but that is the point.

There are some things in life that are so magical and wonderful that they take a nose’s lead above all others.  We know they are our very best favorites because we get a gut reaction from them.  I felt that way when I looked at a Love Shack Fancy catalog the other day.  Everything in that thing called out my name (first, middle, and last) and soon I felt overwhelmed by the beauty and the cost of it all.  It made me realize that I want my very best favorites to be rarer than what can be sold in a mass-market catalog or shop.

We know that there has been an end to luxury – fast fashion flashes before us with alarming regularity.  What’s precious and fine to us on Monday, is lying in a heap on the closet floor by Saturday with no real distinction to it.  The spark of what we may have loved about an item is gone and we are on to the next.  And that’s what THEY want – a revolving door of little beauties, fast discarded to make room for the next week’s offerings.

Thank goodness the grandmillenial style is so popular now.   I can search out all my older (ahem, vintage) pieces and not look old-fashioned anymore.  I’ve always known that my very best favorites can be plucked from the back of my closet or bottom of my jewelry box.  That’s where I find unique uncommon things, often with a story to tell.

In October, some of my very best favorites happen too.  A nice long Indian Summer, my birthday, and the changing colors.  Today as I look outside, I see a blue sky and trees that have been dipped in a paintbox or two.  I’m taking my mother to a quilt show which she has no interest in whatsoever.  But I know she will love that October sky and those painterly trees on the long drive.  It’s her Very Best Favorite and I’ll watch her experience it.  And because I know these special October days are numbered in more ways than one, it’s my Very Best Favorite thing.