Dressing Up

Recently, I was thinking about the dresses my mom used to buy the girls each year. When Emma and Sarah were born, my mom was so excited to be adding two more girls to our male dominated family. She seized every opportunity to dress her girls up. I remember that when Emma started nursery school, my mother bought her a selection of “school” dresses. I didn’t have the heart to tell my mom that little girls didn’t really dress up for school anymore, or that I usually let Emma pick out her own outfits, which were often quite interesting.

My mom got really serious about dressing up her girls for Christmas and Easter. She had a favorite children’s clothing catalog that would arrive at her house on an almost monthly basis. The Christmas dresses would start appearing in their catalog as early as August and my mother would immediately want the girls and me to flip through the catalog and pick the dress that they each wanted to wear that year. When they were very little, I did most of the picking, but it wasn't very long before they were active participants in the selection process.  It sometimes felt a little weird to be choosing Christmas dresses when we still wearing bathing suits, but in my mother’s book, it was never too early to start thinking about her favorite holiday.

Almost as soon as Christmas was over, the catalog with the Easter dresses would arrive and we’d begin the selection process all over again. In this case, we were picking out spring dresses while it was still freezing cold. Frankly, it was often still freezing cold on Easter when they had to wear the springy dresses we chose. They would shiver their way through church and through the annual Easter egg hunt at my mom’s and then change into something more comfortable and warm. My mom often only got a glimpse of them in their Easter finery. But that didn’t really seem to matter. I sort of think she enjoyed watching the girls flip through the catalog and pick out their dresses as much as she enjoyed seeing them wear them.

And these dresses have created a legacy. Each one was beautiful and treasured and I have carefully stored them away for the next generation. It will be one way the next generation gets to know about their beautiful Aunt Emma.