Lessons of the Velvet Dresses

Today’s post is a favorite (rewritten and improved) classic from the archives.

November 2008

Yesterday as I was gathering some things to take to a consignment store, I came across some of Sarah’s special dresses–those little velvet, swishy dresses she wore when she was still young enough to be called a little girl.

Sarah with her Grandma Smith

I held those frothy dresses in my arms and cried. I knew that as I prepared to pass those dresses on, I would have to face the fact that my former velvet-encased darling was now clad in jeans and t-shirts and all the trappings of teenhood.  And I missed so much the small princess that once inhabited the velvet.

And then after I got all melancholy thinking about Sarah growing out of those clothes and out of that particular phase of life, I started thinking about Nathan who will soon be headed off to live in Israel. He will never again be the Pre-Jerusalem Nathan I know right now. He’ll mature and grow and his wings will get stronger, preparing him for that eventual day when he will fly away into adulthood for good and never again return to sleep in the bed of his boyhood.

And then that whole line of thinking reminded me that this is our fifth and final Thanksgiving in this dear house on Woodsdale Dr., a place where we have spent so many golden days and have made so many priceless memories. When I look at pictures of Nathan and Sarah when we first moved here, I am amazed at how much they have grown and changed in the intervening years.

Here they are in 2004 shortly after we moved in.

And here they are now.

How does that even happen? 

I’ve carefully watched them both–day after day after day–always on the lookout for signs of them leaving the younger versions of themselves behind and growing into their older skin. But somehow I seem to have missed the metamorphosis. Everything always seemed the same, everything seemed like it would go on forever, everything seemed to point to the fact that this season would never change.

But then it did.

Now I see my two used-to-be-little Smiths entering teenhood and young adulthood and I wonder where in the world those sweet velvet dresses of the past got away to?  Where did the fifteen-year old Nathan disappear to?  When did all this happen? 

I thought for sure that I would see the changes creeping in but Nathan and Sarah must have grown up in the split second that I briefly turned my back on the turning of the calendar pages.

And so I sit here writing, very early on a Saturday morning. I’m snuggled into my easy chair with Snowy sleeping at my side–sweet, dear Snowy who always looks the same and always acts the same. He never gets any bigger and he will never stop fitting perfectly on my lap and in my arms.

I think that’s one of the reasons God made dogs. He made them for mothers like me who need just one part of their lives to stay the same when all around them children grow up, life moves on, things becomes so very different.

Snowy is a wonderfully unchanging presence; he’ll still be here next to me when Nathan packs his bag and flies back to college tomorrow.  He’ll still be with me when Sarah goes off to the movies with her friends and keeps on taking those wonderfully miraculous teen-aged steps toward independence and growing up.

Her cancer diagnosis should never have even allowed her to survive to this point of life and her continuing march toward womanhood brings me such joy. And yet with all the joy, I’ve come to realize that not every moment of motherhood is marvelous, because sometimes motherhood consists of saying goodbye to what will never again be. 

Like today.

I’ll be leaving in a little while to drop off those swirly, velvet dresses so that another small girl can wear them, so that another mother can take pictures, hoping against hope that the season of velvet dresses won’t pass by before she’s ready to say good-bye. And since you will never really be ready for those goodbyes, tears are an inevitability.

But when you’re done crying, you can start looking forward to the joys that come with embracing what the next season brings. The cycle–hellos, goodbyes, growing, leaving, returning–is unending.

So that’s where I am today. Sitting beside a sleeping Snowy–mourning over the seasons that have changed, thinking about the seasons that are yet to come and pondering this present season whose wisdom is imparted to me through the lessons of the velvet dresses.