How much is that dress in the window?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. The lovely Beverly is making her second appearance in this blog's history. Sit back and enjoy.

I had the epiphany when I blurted my frustration to a near stranger.  I had just been to the mall. I had been trying on dresses that I might wear to Grace’s wedding,  purchasing one potential candidate, and  taking it home to hang with the 5 others hanging in our entry. This way, when I walk in and out of the house, I can see which one speaks to me in just the right mother-of-the-bride tone. The voices of the dresses were beginning to get a little high pitched.

“not dressy enough!”

“too dressy!”
“too young-looking”
“matronly!”

Roger, in a gesture that expresses both his brilliant humor, and endearing kindness, has been naming the dresses in the entryway.  “Classy” is hanging next to “Hoochy Mama”, and he greets them like old friends coming in and out of the house.

“Well hello! Aqua-with-pockets!”

“Hi, Looks-like-a-nightgown!” (his second favorite, after Hoochy Mama)

But even he is growing weary of his tender shenanigans. When I showed him my latest potential online photo of one I might order, and waited for the next clever name, he looked at me blankly and said, “Do you like it?” The fun was waning. My 9 year old nephew, Max, knows about this. His mom asked him recently what he thought of a dress she had tried on for size.

He replied, “I’m not very good at this game.”

My trip  to the mall was on my way to my weekly volunteer gig teaching English to Burmese and African refugees. I walked in to find that class had been cancelled, because the group was listening to a guest speaker about property rights. I was annoyed. I was looking forward to my weekly two hours with Wah Nee Thu and Tee Na  to help me to get out of my head, which always quiets the dress voices. I  blurted randomly to the 2 other twenty-something volunteers,

“Well, I guess I can go back to the mall and try on more stupid dresses!” They looked at me a little scared. “I’m the mother of the bride.” I offered, and they both relaxed and nodded, as I confessed to my first world drama.

“My mom just went through that.” One of them empathized.

The other offered the comment that brought the simultaneous shame and relief that epiphanies can carry with them, “I have a few weddings to attend this summer, and I have been agonizing over what to wear, and I’m not even in the wedding.” She was particularly beautiful, and my instant thought was that she couldn’t possibly hear the same voices installed in dressing room walls, that I had been tuned into only 20 minutes before at Macys. It turns out that dress angst is universal.

On my way home, and yes, after trying on more stupid dresses, I started playing back the other conversations I had been having about THE DRESS with my sisters and friends. Discussions about sleeves and waistlines and shoes were newly lit windows into the tormented dressing rooms of their hearts.  

I pulled out my phone and called a couple of them. I spilled my angst, and they received it, and said beautiful things like, “whatever you wear will be just right”, and “I think you should just be yourself.”  In an email later, another dear sister of choice said, “you just want everything to be beautiful.” It’s true. We all want that.  The deep longing for beauty is the same for me as it is for young Katie the volunteer, and for Wah Nee Thu, an old farmer who would love to trade his American winter sock cap in for his straw hat on a warm day in Myanmar.  

Even deeper, we all want the mercy of being received and chosen for who we are—the ultimate forgiving fabric in the warmest of dressing room lights. Lord have mercy on the mother of the bride.

Take Care

Bev