My eventual honesty with Mama started with a Laura Ashley comforter. I was going away for the summer after 10th grade as a dance major at the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program and could decorate a space entirely for myself. I envisioned decorating my side of the college dormitory in all Laura Ashley, as I had seen in the J.C. Penny catalog with matching floral bedding and draperies. I wanted to have matching things like that, not like my bedroom at home with homemade curtains and a white-painted desk that Daddy built. I decided that a thick, floral, luxurious Laura Ashley comforter would be my official welcome to adulthood, one that smelled sweet and felt cool to the touch.