Not that trying on a dress is something all that unusual [1], but this thing happened to me when I did it this week.
Here’s the dress, above, photo courtesy of CAbi clothing. If you can’t see it, I’ll describe it to you in my high-fashion vocabulary [2]: it was green, and silky-ish (some kind of poly-something, I assume); a collared/button-down shirt-dress with a waist tie AND IT LOOKED LIKE A DRESS MY MOM WOULD HAVE LOVED. Except for the green. My mom avoided the green/yellow things in life, because her liver had issues and green and yellow things made her look jaundiced. So she said. I never actually noticed. But I was sixteen when she died, so “I never actually noticed” could be my theme song.
Anyway, the dress looked awful on me. That sassy, confident, leggy, honey-maned model? Not me. At all. It was, in every particular, wrong. But I sort of loved it anyway, because it looked so Mom-ish (in the “my mom” definition, not the “mom jeans” definition). And I stood there, in front of a very large mirror, staring at me in this wrong dress that felt so very right in its ability to conjure. Memories. Feelings. Smells and sounds of that laugh that my kids wouldn’t recognize. The small sweet memories that I hold on my palm like a butterfly that may, any second, fly away — but the ME that is now, this ME is willing to enjoy the seconds the memory flutters there. Maybe that’s the definition of the way I’ve grown up: That I can enjoy the fleeting while it occurs, instead of dreading the moment that it will be gone.
—
[1] Kind of it is.
[2] Please stop that laughing.
(10) Comments for this blog
I love your footnotes. And you.
I love your footnotes. And you.
Ah, so lovely.
Funnily, I looked at the picture before reading the post and thought, Hmm . . . that dress doesn’t really say “Becca” to me. And I love that it said something else. Something that became smiles and realizations and this post that made me smile today.
Ah, so lovely.
Funnily, I looked at the picture before reading the post and thought, Hmm . . . that dress doesn’t really say “Becca” to me. And I love that it said something else. Something that became smiles and realizations and this post that made me smile today.
For a second I thought that WAS you in the picture. (Saw in in my thumbnail version on blogger first.) You’re writing all these lovely things lately and there’s so much *feeling* in them. Love you.
For a second I thought that WAS you in the picture. (Saw in in my thumbnail version on blogger first.) You’re writing all these lovely things lately and there’s so much *feeling* in them. Love you.
Love you and love your mom! I’m sure you were beautiful.
Love you and love your mom! I’m sure you were beautiful.
It is a true treasure to be able to enjoy these precious moments. To me these moments are like the embraces that our passed loved ones cannot give to us at this time.
It is a true treasure to be able to enjoy these precious moments. To me these moments are like the embraces that our passed loved ones cannot give to us at this time.