My second granddaughter is due within the month. That prompted me to go on a search for a particular pair of baby dresses: a cotton and embroider dress from Ecuador that belonged to Arwen and needed to be handed off to her daughter, and a crochet dress that was handed down to me. It’s a dress that has been passed down through the women in the family: mother to daughter, mother to daughter. I was prompted to think of that dress because of the proximity of what would have been my mother’s 81st birthday this week. I just wanted to see it again and feel the texture of it.
The problem was: I had no idea where I’d stored the crochet dress handed down to me by my mother!
Now, in my defense, I have been slipping into that fuzzy-minded realm of true clinical depression and my thinking has not been exactly stellar (I’m calling my doctor this week, so don’t worry about my emotional state). And we have been living in this house for 12 years, but not all boxes have been unpacked. Storage is severely limited in this house.
A couple days ago, I had a flash of insight. I knew exactly where the dress should be: in a white box in my closet, stored under a white box that holds my mother’s (and my) wedding dress. I retrieved the box.
The dress I was looking for was not in the box. But items I had forgotten I had saved were in the box. Some were starting to yellow with age.
There was a well-worn, frayed baby quilt. My husband’s mother made it for Arwen. The little blue-and-white shirt was given to my son on the momentous occasion of his safe delivery at the Birth Center with the aid of two fabulous nurse-midwifes and my husband. The ugly Garfield Tee is my sentimental token: I wore it when I lost my first baby. I wore it when I gave birth to Arwen. I wore it when I gave birth to Levi. Garfield has been around (no pun intended).
The Tee says “I’m round and proud of it.”
I found the all cotton dress my friend in the Peace Corps sent Arwen upon the event of her birth. I soaked it all night in Oxy-Clean™ and the yellow came most of the way out without damaging the bright embroidery colors.
From the Yukon Territory, little Inuit moccasins.
The pink-white-green-blue afghan was crocheted by my husband’s paternal grandmother, Maxine. Her full name was Beulah Maxine Presley, but you never, ever wanted to call her Beulah. Maxine was a larger-than-life gun-totin’ granny with good aim. She also adored Elvis Presley and collected Elvis whiskey decanters. And she could crochet a mean afghan that stood up to years of abuse.
The little green baby blanket was a gift from a neighbor that I never thought particularly liked me. She had a loom in her living room and homeschooled her only child. When she presented me with this hand-made blanket, I was humbled: she did like me and I had judged her harshly. That blanket held up to abuse, too.
The yellow knit dress was an Easter gift to Arwen from my mother on the occasion of Arwen’s second or third Easter. It’s beautiful and I had honestly forgotten it existed.
But then, I had forgotten almost all of those items except for the dress from Ecuador. Saved but forgotten, and rescued in time for the owner (Arwen) to pass them on to her own daughter.
Well, everything except the baby boy shirt and my Garfield Tee. Levi gets the baby boy shirt when he’s ready for sentimental tokens to store. Besides I found other treasures for him in my search (which will be another blog post).
Well, that was exciting, but I *still* did not have the crochet dress I was picturing in my brain. And now I was less certain of where it could be.
Last night, I paused in front of Harvey’s nighttime crate. Both dogs have their beds tucked under the stairwell. There are two doors into the crawl space and the crates are easy to access. Except… Didn’t I still have some boxes back in behind Harvey’s crate? Boxes that I never moved up to the attic when I put the crate in to the cubby under the stairs…
I muttered, “Crap.” And this morning, I pulled Harvey’s crate out. And box after box of items marked “Mom’s Scrap Book Stuff”, “Mementoes”, “Stuff from Dad’s Dresser”, and “Negatives and Camera Stuff.”
I was covered in dog hair, stair dust, dirt, dog hair, and I wore rubber gloves in case I ran into a Brown Recluse (we don’t have Widows here, but I guess there’s always the possibility one hitch-hiked from Nevada to my house)… Did I mention I was covered in dog hair?
Tonight, I decided that the only way to fight the encroaching darkness of depression was to start opening boxes and looking for that dress. It’s not going to get better until I’m on meds, anyway.
I found my mother’s paper dolls (blog post for March 28: Paper Dolls from the 1950’s). I found a 1918 Saturday Evening Post. All the newspapers from 9/11/2001. All my memorabilia from a trip to Japan in 1974.
When I pulled this box out of the second box I was rummaging in, I knew I hit pay dirt. It all came flooding back to me. I knew I held the crochet dress in my trembling hands.
And, once again, there were items I had long forgotten about that were also tucked into the box for safe-keeping.
The bolero my mother made me when I had to tap dance the Cha-Cha for our big Dance Review. I was in the 3rd or 4th Grade. I’d been taking ballet and tap from Roma Bosch, the one-time professional ballerina who now gave lessons in her home to all the little kids in town. Lessons were cheap. Roma was not.
The slipper has nothing to do with the bolero.
The Pin Cushion Doll has nothing to do with baby girls, but it was in the box, with the beaded girl’s slipper. There’s only one slipper and it looks incredibly miserable to wear (real beads on the instep? Ow). Pin Cushion Doll comes with instructions on how to make a pin cushion dress. Or Tea Cozy. Or telephone cover.
WHOA. I had forgotten this. My mother’s christening gown, 1932. The ribbon is pristine. Well, the dress is, too. No yellowing at all.
And finally – the Dress. there are actually two ribbons that are for making little bows at the waist of the crochet over-dress. The hand-made slip is satin.
I actually got to wear the dress once, briefly, when I was quite small. But my mother decided I might spill something onto it and that was a chance she did not want to take. So it was boxed and stored until I became a young woman with a daughter of my own.
I never let Arwen wear it, either. I think the crochet dress would probably hold up pretty well, but the slip is very fragile.
Details of the buttons on the back. Not sewn in very well, but rather just basted in as if the creator ran out of time and then never returned to finish the job.
The embroidery on the slip is also hastily done and serves to hold the facing down (or lack of facing, as the case is). the embroidery is all that holds the straps on. I do not know why this part was done by hand when the rest of the slip is machine sewn. Perhaps my grandmother had to finish it in a hurry and so skipped steps.
That’s something I would do. If I sewed, which I try not to. Or crocheted, which I don’t.
I’ll send Arwen her baby things. My mother’s things will stay with me for awhile longer.
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Jaci Dawn 