I am standing in my small office-storage-laundry room folding towels newly out of the dryer. I have dumped the bulky warm pile onto the nearest flat surface, and as I draw out the next tangled towel, I realize…
… the surface on which they are sitting, and I am using to fold, is my wedding dress.
Lying there on top of boxes of old files and maybe the Christmas dishes, in only its thick plastic cover, which I quickly covered after the ceremony, is my wedding dress. Now folding table.
This was my second wedding and dress. I was no blushing or unsure bride. In my mid-forties, I was excited and a bit outlandish to wear an actual dress again. And such a one! Big. White. Silk. With plenty of my ample décolletage at play.
But this wedding had been a happy dream-like fantasy one, a party and a celebration. To signify the “toes-up” marriage I had held out for. I had fun planning it, decorating for it, and planting the gardens in time for it — as well as dressing for it.
My soon-to-be stepdaughter and I had some laughs shopping for the dress, as everyone assumed she was the bride! In the end, I custom-ordered my dress from a London designer.
Back to today’s laundry moment. It is now twenty-five years later, but only four years after the divorce. In the actual physical move, I wasn’t able to deal with the dress, such a talisman. And just last month, in a cost-saving frenzy, I emptied the storage unit, and my office-laundry room became the office-laundry-storage room.
And my voluminous wedding dress, serving as yet another lesson in the infinite possibilities of transformation,is now my very expensive laundry folding table. Pliant but serviceable.