I Was Not Tired of Blogging, Only Busy

For some reason I keep thinking about this one thing.

Several years ago when my parents were alive and I was down visiting them for the weekend, I wanted to find this one yellow dress. It was in their closet; good lord, they had three closets filled with clothes. Their room, the spare room, and the other spare room, all filled with clothes. See, I had made this hideous yellow dress when I was about twelve. I was not a great seamstress. The most interesting and successful thing I ever did in Home Ec was to sew my hand to Lisa Frantz's hand in the ninth grade. We took a needle and thread and sewed through little bits of skin and sewed our hands together. It didn't hurt. There was no blood. It wasn't as weird as it sounds. Anyway, when we showed Mrs. Sheets what we'd done, she sent us to the councilor. It really was not that weird.

So, anyway, back to the dress. Picture this...polyester lemon yellow tank dress, knee length, lined. The pockets were the best though. They kind of curved up and made a belt loop. Two pockets, two belt loops (look, it was the 70's). Even had a zipper! I made precise stitches and had to redo the zipper about a hundred times. But the finished product was perfect. It was the only thing I ever made In Home Ec that was REAL. The only thing that was slightly acceptable. I might have worn it once. But, I loved that dress. It said something to me about being able to do something regular.

So, I looked in every closet. Good lord, it had been in that second spare room closet two weeks before. I had even thought about taking it home then. But I hadn't. I looked in the other two closets too. No dress. I asked my mom where it was. Just looking for it, I said. I wanted to see it. I thought I'd take it home. No flipping dress. Hmmmm, where could that dress be? My mom, standing in the kitchen, said, oh, I think I took a bag of stuff to Goodwill last week, I'm sorry it must have been in there.

Oh My God. It was the one thing I ever sewed to completion in my whole life. I MADE that damn dress and my mom gave it to Goodwill?????? What the fuck? I became incensed. I got in my car and drove around PHOENIX to all the Goodwills looking for that dress. I spent an entire Saturday driving from mini-mall to mini-mall. Yes, 30 Goodwill stores, me running through them riffling through the racks. Where's my dress, I wanted to scream to everyone. No dress.

I was livid the entire weekend. How could my mother give ONE bag to Goodwill and include my handmade polyester, hideous dress? I needed that dress. I don't know why. I could not let it go that entire weekend. I alternated between bitter anger and the silent treatment. It made me sick to my stomach that she had given it away. I said mean things like, "There are a lot of clothes you could have given away and you chose MY DRESS. THAT I MADE BY HAND? I"LL NEVER SEW ANOTHER DRESS IN MY LIFE AND YOU GAVE IT AWAY??!!" I had to go home early. I even cried about that stupid dress.

Why have I held on to that? Why are there things we have such a hard time letting go of? It's not like it was a catastrophe. It was just a dress.

A few months later she sent me a card for my birthday and it said, "Happy Birthday! We love you. Dad played nine holes of golf today and I went out to lunch with Barbara and Carol....(two more paragraphs). Sorry about the dress. Love, mom." I kept that card. I needed to know she was sorry. I needed to know that she acknowledged that she was wrong. My mom had never said the words "I'm sorry" to me, not because she wouldn't, but because she never really did anything to me to be sorry about. I also keep that card because it gives me a little perspective, thinking about how, if that's the worst thing my mom ever did to me, I should feel pretty damn good.

I am still a baby about it though, and it still gives me a tweak when I think about it. I know it might have ended up as the rag some guy uses to wipe the oil off the dipstick of his car, thrown onto an old shelf in some garage. But I try to make myself just let it go by envisioning some 12 year old girl wearing my handmade dress and loving it. I try to think about how she might put folded notes from her best friend Cynthia in the pockets. How she might wear a silly macrame belt and smile as she threads it through the belt loops, amazed at how they are ACTUALLY PART OF THE POCKETS. I know she has no idea it's handmade or that it was the only thing I ever sewed. That's the thing that makes me feel better, imagining her just wearing it, all carefree and twelve.