THE DRESS
By
Sheryl J. Bize
Boutte
By
the mid 1960’s my parents had four school-aged daughters to support and a fifth
change-of –life daughter on the way. Birthday and Christmas gifts often
supplemented outgrown or worn out school clothes along with the begged for
doll, bike or skates. Sometimes we got
something special; something homemade, handed down or handed over that always
brought a unique and precious feel to the celebration.
It
was in this tradition on Christmas Day in 1966, while the color wheel changed
the aluminum tree from blue to green to red and back again, my mother handed me
a gold- ribboned box. Inside was a
simple frock; a multi-colored, multi-flowered shirtwaist dress with a wide belt
and full skirt. A gently worn hand-me-down
from one of my mother’s wealthy acquaintances, the bottom of the hem hit just
below my knobby knees and fit my unfinished 15-year-old body to a “T. “ Even
though it was a spring dress, I could not wait to wear it to school. My fingers were already turning the front doorknob,
as my mother’s voice admonished, “Girl, don’t you know it is JANUARY? You are
going to catch pneumonia in that thin little dress!” But I was halfway down the
street and about to round the corner on my usual path to my freshman year in
high school before she could finish her second sentence. My inaugural wearing
of this dress would also be the day a 17-year old boy would look out of his
window from the 3rd house on the right and see me for the first
time.
I knew I probably wore that dress much too often,
but I had never had anything like it. It had the power to make my teenage self
feel like a big gown up lady and became the favorite in my sparse
wardrobe. It also made that boy wait for
me to pass his house each day and then fall into step behind me. Stealthy and silent, he walked behind me for
the five blocks to school for the rest of the school year. A bookworm and a
loner, totally inside my own head as I made my way, I never thought to look
back.
On
a late summer day, after almost a year of following me after I rounded the corner,
the forces emanating from that dress with me in it, would give that boy the
courage to ring my doorbell and introduce himself. “Hi, I’m Anthony from around the corner. Does
the girl with the flowery dress live here?” he asked my sister who answered the
door. With her usual eye roll she
answered, “ You must be looking for Sheryl.
She is always wearing that old-timey dress.” She called to me to come to the door and from
that day forward the boy from around the corner became my boyfriend and soon
after that, my fiancé.
On
a beautiful spring day in 1971, we married in the living room of my family home
with only our parents, my grandmother and a few friends in attendance. Still waiflike at age nineteen, my wedding
dress was an elegant non-flowery peach chiffon and silk, the perfect compliment
to my new husband’s ruffled peach shirt and coordinating bowtie. Our reception
consisted of post-wedding photos taken in my parent’s park-like backyard, while
our few guests dined on crust-less tuna and chicken salad sandwiches cut into
little squares accompanied by Mum’s extra dry champagne.
Settling
into married life was automatic for us and as though it was always meant to
be. I finished college and my husband
was at my graduation along with my parents.
Soon after I began my career with the government while my husband
continued his climb in the building industry and finished his degree. During this time, the dress became so faded
the flowers were barley visible, and so threadbare it was no longer wearable. Tearfully,
I threw it away.
As
the years passed, my husband would often come home on my birthday, our anniversary
or Christmas with a ribbon-tied box containing an exquisite dress, suit or even
shoes, from a small boutique he claimed as his territory for his gifts to me. Once he presented me with a beautiful white
suit and when I asked what the occasion was, he replied, “Because its Tuesday.”
He always chose the correct size and only stopped the practice when his
boutique of choice went out of business.
But of all the wonderful articles of clothing he purchased, the dress,
or anything like it, was never among them.
Then
one rainy December day in 1976, during one of my shopping trips through the
annual major department store Christmas wish book I saw it; a multi-flowered
shirtwaist dress with a white background, a full skirt and a wide belt. It did
not matter to me that Christmas was near and I was ordering a dress from the
catalogue’s preview for spring, I had to have it and ordered it right away. When
it arrived I was a bit disappointed to find that the fabric had an unworn
stiffness to it and therefore not as soft as the original, the flowers were not
as vibrant as they had appeared in the catalogue picture, and the belt was a
skinnier version of its predecessor. But
after so many years of dress drought, I decided this dress and I would make a pact
to stay together, even though we both knew the relationship would never be
ideal.
My husband
loved me in this dress even though I knew it for the poseur it was. And because
he loved it, I wore it to work and out to dinner. I wore to the movies and to the supermarket. I wore it with a shawl in the spring and with
boots and a jacket in the winter. I continued to wear it after our daughter was
born in 1977 and was surprised, yet happy that after I punched an extra hole in
the belt for just a bit more room, it continued to fit. I wore it through my
daughter’s early school years and into her entry to junior high. After she told me how much she liked it, I
wore it even more. Still, through all of that, this dress could not convince me
that it was the one.
Since
I could never get enough of how happy it made my family, over time the dress
and I had settled into an easy truce. I came to accept the fact that it could
not help me to recapture the feelings I had when I wore the anointed original. And it seemed to know that although it was not
the dress, my family’s reactions would
make it a most treasured piece in my by now, extensive and often talked about
wardrobe.
Then
one day, after 19 years of wear, I put the dress on and discovered I could no
longer easily button it, and had run out of room for more belt holes. In
defiance, I buttoned it and fastened the belt anyway, breaking a fingernail to
the quick as I did so. The dress countered my orders for its cooperation with sharp
and intense rib pain and taking away my ability to breathe. We stood at loggerheads in the mirror for a
few seconds before I gave in and feverishly began to free myself from its
grip. My disappearing waistline and the dress
had finally conspired to betray me. With
mixed emotions I knew we would have to part ways.
Time
went by and dresses with magic flowers and full skirts were often sought but
not found. Over the years, I tried to replicate that special dress many times
over, but it always ended in disappointment and eventual rejection; sometimes
by me, but more often by the dress as the Body Mass Index continued its upward
climb. Along the way, I happened upon beige and brown flowered silk shirtwaist
and I bought it, but like the substitute garden scene dress I had previously
outgrown, it was just not the same. I even tried other styles, and I felt I
looked just fine, but I felt nothing extraordinary when they draped my frame and
somehow that just continued to feel like a requirement.
From
time to time, I would still pine for that original long-lost dress and the
power it had to make a shy boy follow me to school, my daughter smile, and strangers
stop to tell me how great I looked. Even though I was loved well, had a happy
home and fulfilling work, I still wanted the all the dress had given me.
In
1995, our daughter went off to college and we became empty nesters. We moved on
with life and the blessings of family and love continued as the years passed
without the dress. Then on Christmas Day in 2010, my husband presented me with
a golden box wrapped with a golden bow.
We had decided not to buy gifts that year, because we felt so blessed,
so I was both surprised at the gift and annoyed that he had broken the pact. In
the middle of a hot flash with lips pursed, I launched into my protest, “But I
thought we weren’t going to…” I was stopped in mid-sentence when my smiling
husband and daughter said in unison, “ Just open it!” Their smiles grew wider and wider as I pushed
through the tissue paper labeled “Zell’s Vintage” and opened the box.
Inside was a simple frock.
A multi-colored, multi-flowered shirtwaist
dress with a wide belt and a full skirt.
The Dress was back for Christmas.
© Sheryl J.
Bize Boutte 2012
This story and others appear in my book, “A Dollar Five:
Stories
From a Baby Boomers Ongoing Journey” available at Amazon.com and other
booksellers
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