When A Dress Isn’t Just A Dress

Things we hold on to. And how to let go.

Back in the days when we took photos with plastic cameras that we mailed away to be turned into actual photographs printed on glossy paper and sent back to us 7 to 10 days later with an image apparently taken while swimming underwater in the dark…

I bought a red dress.

See that red blur in the middle?  That is me.  Chicken dancing. 

In the best dress I have ever worn or owned in my life.  

Seventeen years later, it still hangs in my closet. Seemingly sewn together with nostalgia and longing and all kinds of schmaltzy feelings.  

You have something like this in your closet, too.  We all do.

It’s the ever so slightly pinstripe suit you bought to wear every time you did something big and important and slightly outcome-unknown so you needed to be the best in the room.

It’s the t-shirt with a giant turkey on it that came in the goodie bag at the very first 5k you didn’t think you could ever do, but you did.

It’s the cotton eyelet skirt you wore the summer you met the person you wanted to love you forever.

Or.  

It’s the red MaxMara dress I bought on a summer day in 2007. A few weeks before a trial that nobody but my boss’s boss thought we should win.  A few months before I moved to Italy because I was restless.  A few lifetimes and more than a few start-overs ago.

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I bought this dress to wear to my 20th high school reunion. 

The reunion from the high school I graduated from. Not the high school I started at.

I was entering my junior year when we moved.  And we almost didn’t move because I didn’t want to go.  I wanted to stay.  My mom might have been getting an awesome, upgraded, career-making new job.  But as far as I could see, this new town and this new school and these new people had nothing for me.  Nothing better than what I already had, anyways.  

I knew this because my mom had taken my sister and I to visit this new world.  

River Forest High School sounds like it should be the name of a fancy, expensive school.  Believe me when I tell you that it was not.  It boasted of a theater in the round, but so far as I can tell, nobody knew how to actually do theater in the round so that room was never used. Also, apparently nobody knew how to dribble or shoot because the River Forest girl’s basketball team had never ever won a game in the history of girl’s basketball. 

Attending this school was not going to prepare me for either the WNBA or Broadway.

But my mom was undeterred.  

So we walked the halls.  We met the basketball coach.  We ate lunch in the cafeteria with random students who were about as interested in being our friends as we were in being theirs.  

At the end of the day, my sister was in. Cannonballed, synchronized swimming by herself, all the way, in.

I, on the other hand, was not even a little bit in.  I was “What is wrong with you? Why would you do this to me?” completely and totally out.

And so my mom declined the job offer.  

Except then she didn’t.  

Because while shooting baskets in the gym one morning (because of the WNBA career path I was on), I realized that 

(1) I was a selfish little snot.

(2) My mom deserved to be happy.

(3) I was outvoted on this family decision. And

(4) If everyone in my family was miserable because we were staying, then it was gonna be really hard for me to enjoy being really, really happy about it without also being a complete butthead.  

Also, because the teen drama queen did not miss her cue (because of the Broadway star career path I was on), I thought that if I reversed position, I could possibly leverage my benevolence with a Universe who might reward me for sacrificing my personal joy and entire future happiness.  Karma is my boyfriend.

And so I told my mom it would be OK to uproot me from everything that was anything to me in the whole world. 

And she did.

And I can’t imagine what my life would have turned out to be if she hadn’t.

I loved my last 2 years of high school.  I mean, I LOVE loved my last 2 years of high school. 

Those kids we ate lunch with on our scouting trip became my best friends.

We played Pictionary in our living room and rented movies from Blockbuster to watch in the Craigin’s basement.

We scarfed down all the crazy bread we could get our hands on.  And we walked like Egyptians. 

I went to Prom with the captain of the football team.  And we won a girl’s basketball game!  

And when I graduated, we all stayed BFFs.  FE and A.

Except we didn’t because I jettisoned myself as far away from River Forest High School as I could get, never to return. 

True story.

But when I heard there was going to be a 20-Year reunion?  I sent in my RSVP and went shopping for a dress.

I wanted to look good.  Like really good.  Like nobody knew who was gonna be there and if the captain of the football team showed up, I wanted to be ready.

Enter the MaxMara Miracle on 34th Street, sexy as hell (but also very demure—sorry!), red dress.

Oh yeah. I. Was. Ready.

You wanna know the most exciting thing that happened at the reunion?  The DJ played the chicken dance and we all flapped our wing arms and “na na na na na na na” -ed on the dance floor. 

Womp.

Womp.

But this is not the point.  

The point is: This red dress that’s been hanging in my closet for 17 years is attached to some deeply wonderful memories of some deeply remarkable years in my life.  The River Forest years that should have sucked.  But didn’t.  And the trial-winning, move to Italy, starting over (again and again) years that should have been scary and difficult and full of angst. But weren’t.

This dress meant something.

For the past 3 years, I’ve asked myself if it was time to get rid of this dress. 

It’s been worn and washed so many times that the material is sheeny in spots and thin in others and stretched out in some very strange places.  The dress is out of style and it just doesn’t really suit my body anymore.  Plus, I don’t have the right shoes to wear with it.

And yet.  

(sigh)

Well, this month, I decided to let the dress go.  

I will never wear it again.  I don’t need it.  It’s taking up space in my closet.  And I don’t even really want it anymore.

It’s just a red dress.  

It’s a red dress with a pickle barrel full of meaning and memories and sentiments attached to it.  But it really is just a dress.

What the dress means to me has nothing to do with the actual item of clothing.

I don’t need the dress to remind me that I had the time of my life in a place I never wanted to be.  

I don’t need the dress to remind me that once upon a time, I walked like an Egyptian with the captain of the football team and a belly full of crazy bread.  

I don’t need the dress to remind me how far I’ve come.  

Or how amazing I used to look in the dress back when I looked amazing in it.  

I remember it all too well. 

These memories don’t require a piece of cloth to hang in my closet for no good reason.

I’m the kind of professional organizer who stands by the idea that “The heart wants what the heart wants.” And I have no interest in separating people from things they do not want to be separated from.  

But, I also know that we don’t have to feel guilty about letting go of things that are just taking up space.  Even if those things have meant something to us.

Letting go of these things doesn’t mean that we’re letting go of the meaning or the sentiment or memories attached to those things.  We’re allowed to keep the feelings without keeping the actual things.  

Right now, I need space for all of the things that are happening in this part of my life.  And for all the good things that are coming my way in the future. 

And so.

My red dress is something I am letting go of.  

I don’t need my closet to hold all the love and fun and history and melancholy associated with this dress.  My heart has been doing that for years now.  

And also, there’s a blurry picture on my computer.

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