<\/p>\n
Then my wife looked past Colleen at the bride-to-be and said, \u201cSweetheart, go get your mother\u2019s gown out of the guest room closet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our niece is wearing Colleen\u2019s dress in October. It\u2019s been hanging in a garment bag in that lake house for twenty-one years, and this whole family has heard the story about it a hundred times \u2014 the boutique in Chicago, the fittings, what it cost, said the way people say a number they want repeated.<\/p>\n
The girl came back down the stairs with it over her arm.<\/p>\n
Deb said, \u201cTurn the left side seam out, honey. Down by the hem.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a label sewn in there. Half an inch of grosgrain ribbon, hand-stitched, the way my wife has finished every single thing she\u2019s made since 1994. Two initials and a date.<\/p>\n
D.M. \u2014 4\/2003.<\/p>\n
My sister did not marry money in 2003. My sister married a man who had nothing yet and a wedding date her mother had already announced at church, and in February of that year she sat at our kitchen table and cried until eleven at night.<\/p>\n
Deb made that gown in six weeks. Silk she drove to Cleveland for and paid for out of her own account. Two hundred and some hours after her shifts, hand-beading a bodice under a magnifying lamp, because Colleen had brought her a picture torn out of a magazine and said this one, this is the one.<\/p>\n
And when it was finished, Colleen asked her to never say it wasn\u2019t the Chicago dress. And Deb said all right. And that was the end of it for twenty-two years.<\/p>\n
She has stood in that lake house being called \u201cour little seamstress\u201d by women who complimented that gown at the wedding.<\/p>\n
Deb reached into her sewing tote and put one more thing on the table \u2014 a scrap of stationery, folded down to nothing, pinned inside the lid of her sewing box since April of 2003, in my sister\u2019s handwriting:<\/p>\n
\u201cI will never be able to pay you for this and I am too proud to let anybody know you did it. Please forgive me for both of those. \u2014 C.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Colleen sat down in a kitchen chair in front of eleven of her friends and put both hands over her face.<\/p>\n Nobody said a word for a long time. Then our niece \u2014 nineteen years old, and braver than every adult in that room \u2014 said, \u201cSo Aunt Deb made my dress twice.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s what broke it. My sister made a sound I have never heard out of her in my life, and my wife got up and went and stood behind her chair with a hand on her shoulder, which is more grace than I would have managed.<\/p>\n She\u2019s altering it for October. Colleen asked her to, out loud, in front of everybody, and used the word gown instead of craft.<\/p>\n At that wedding it\u2019s going to have two labels in the seam. Deb\u2019s putting the second one in right below the first. Same ribbon, same hand, twenty-two years apart.<\/p>\n My sister has already told four people at the country club who made it. She gets the year wrong every single time and my wife has never once corrected her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Then my wife looked past Colleen at the bride-to-be and said, \u201cSweetheart, go get your mother\u2019s gown out of the guest room closet.\u201d Our niece is wearing Colleen\u2019s dress … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4104,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4102\/revisions\/4104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}