A Miss Habersham Moment

We have entered the stage of life when grandchildren are getting married. The first was my oldest grandson last July, and now his sister is engaged, and there’s another engagement in the works. I’m so happy to be here for these wonderful times, and I’m enjoying every moment.

Or I was—until I opened the box that contains the wedding dress and veil I wore in 1963. After my best friend wore my dress two years later, her mother had it cleaned and “preserved” and returned to me, sealed in a keepsake box—supposedly to last forever!

So why would I decide to open it now, after all these years?

It occurred to me: wouldn’t it be special if my granddaughters could wear my veil? None of them will ever wear the dress; they all tower over me, and besides, the dress would be terribly out of style. But the veil . . .

And so my husband hauled the box down from a high shelf, and we opened it. Here is what we found.

The dress itself is actually in good shape. It’s more champagne now than ivory. That the dress was ivory to begin with bothered my mother: would an ivory dress suggest that I wasn’t fit to wear a “pure” white one? The salesperson took my side. Ivory was much prettier with my skin tone, she said. So ivory it was.

But the veil: you can see it in the photo, peeking out at the top of the dress. The veil has turned a smoky gray. The tulle is brittle, like it might snap at my touch.

So, my illusions shattered, we re-sealed the box. Why, I’m not sure—so it’ll be someone else’s problem someday, I guess. I have to admit I cried, not so much for the veil and dress as for what they represent: a time in my life that was innocent and so very promising. The sixty-plus years since? While the dress and veil were aging and turning, I was aging and turning, too. I’m a very different person from the one who walked down that aisle. I too am brittle now, and like the dress and veil, there’s no “preserving” me. I feel that every day.

But I also feel the wonder of the days I’m given, although the time feels perilous, and I worry about my grandchildren, just starting their adult lives in a world that forces itself upon them in ways it never did on me, in spite of the fact that I came of age in a time of great turmoil and change. Those worries can’t be packed neatly into a box the way the dress that represents my past life can.

But we are here, right? And my “girls”—my grandsons too, of course—will have their own beginnings. So here’s to rings and wedding dates, to new places and homes and futures!

Here’s to the spirit of “newness” in a world that so so badly needs it.