daily bliss: the dress

I remember sunny summer afternoons, before or perhaps after blueberry picking season, when I toted my red plastic briefcase of art supplies to the backyard. Our canvas tent, airing out after one of our family vacations spent at Michigan state parks, made a perfect work space. I flipped the pages in my drawing tablet and selected my pencils and began to sketch. It was always the same: a woman's body, with little detail on face or hands, the emphasis on the dress. My favorite dress was inspired by Anne of Green Gables' early obsession with puff sleeves, as well as the contemporary fashion trends of big shoulders and sleeves that bespoke empowerment. I still remember the white dress, with big puffed short sleeves, adorned with bows. The fitted bodice erupted into a ballgown skirt, and the dress was embellished with pastel floral and swirl embroidery. I loved this dress. I wanted this dress. 

And, a few years later, when I was a sophomore in college, I tacked up my favorite Estee Lauder Beautiful ad, featuring a bride in a puff sleeved confection of a dress. I would, according to the elaborate timelines my friends and I created, marry at age 24, in such a dress. I also imagined the romantic repartee between myself  (J) and my future suitor (FS):

FS: What scent are you wearing?

J: Beautiful.

FS: How fitting, because you are beautiful. 

J: (beaming, rapturously in love)

Clearly I was in college, and soon to be majoring in English literature, for a reason. I needed better  romantic repartee (hello, Mr. Darcy!).

Fast forward some decades, to early August 2011, when my beloved boyfriend G and I have just become engaged. Within two weeks, I was wedding dress shopping. While my fashionista tendencies have ebbed and flowed depending on paychecks and student loan payoffs, as well as proximity to shopping centers, I still love clothing, especially fancy dress clothes. The kind of gowns that have a limited use, that stun with well-cut lines and sensual fabrics. The kind of clothes I have worn, well, almost never in my life. This was my chance. 

I previously blogged about the first wedding dress shopping trip here, and these first two photos show my interest in tea-length gowns and lace. I dreamed of a tea-length, fitted bodice and floofy skirted 1950s vintage style. I even had one such dress, purchased on eBay long before our engagement. This bargain dress featured a pink taffeta underlayer and lace overlay, with a pink chiffon embellished bustline. Somehow, though, this look wasn't flattering, and while I loved the party feel of a short dress, I didn't feel sufficiently bridal. 

Bridal. What does that mean? I knew what it meant in the 1990s when my friends and I had a strict, conventional timeline to adhere to: graduate, marry, wait two years, have kids. The bridal phase would truly be one of transition, from the newly minted independence of recent college grad to a wife, soon-to-be mother. This narrative alluded all of us, in one way or another, and I think we're all better, stronger, truer selves because of it. But what does bridal mean when you're engaged at 38, in your first serious relationship, cohabiting, and sporting enough degrees to justify your student loan payments? What does is mean when your plan, post-marriage is to move to a bigger (rented) home, earn tenure, and consider a canine "child"? 

This question, and the corresponding question of what a wife is when you follow a more progressive, feminist, deeply spiritual but not religious, ethical model, accompanied me throughout our engagement. 

I realized that I wanted the long gown. I wanted the sweep of some kind of train. I wanted a dress that would trail romantically across the beach, where our wedding would be. I wanted a gown with some kind of sleeves, and I hoped for a gown made in America. I found Premiere Couture, a perfect bridal shop in Madison, Wisconsin. When I told Laura what I wanted, she pulled several dresses, including one that met all of my wishes. 

Since strapless dresses are so ubiquitous, I tried a few here, and loved the previous dress, an airy silk dress by Canadian designer Lea-Ann Belter. As rivulets of sweat manifested everywhere during our ceremony, I thought back to this dress and had a moment where I wished I was wearing one lightweight layer instead of double-faced satin with a double lace overlay. 

Alas, that gown, nor this classic, elegant strapless lace couldn't compete with the gown that felt perfectly me. 

With a flattering v-neck line, a ruched satin waistband trimmed with satin covered buttons in the back, to the a-line skirt and short train, from the scalloped edges of the Italian re-embroidered lace, my gown, Amber by New York designer Janet Nelson Kumar, was everything I could hope for. I felt bridal, but most importantly, I felt me. 

The dress was hot on a 90 degree day when the reliable Lake Michigan breeze had apparently absconded, but was keeping the white reception tent, some five miles inland, relatively cool. Still, I had no trouble lifting the dress and traipsing into the chilly waters post-ceremony before greeting and hugging family and friends. 

My dress was one of the clearest links to bridal and wedding tradition, as the color, style, fabrics neatly fit into conventional trends. And while G and I eschewed many wedding traditions, we agreed that the dress would be secret until that moment he saw me crest the dune, walking with both of my parents. A little mystery creates a greater allure around the dress. 

Later, my mom helped bustle my dress for the dancing hours to come. And, yes, I was true to the claim I made to post-college roommate K that I would dance all night at my wedding. And, yes, I can be added to the long list of brides whose bustle falls out with an errant step. The ribbon tie came loose, but my dress is just fine. 

I wore my dress to the hotel, and reluctantly took it off, hanging it in the closet after inspecting the hem for beach and grass stains. The mystery was gone, the dress worn, sweat-slicked, and a little frayed and dirty around the hem. Soon it will be cleaned, then I'll hang it in a muslin bag in my closet, in our new home, and in subsequent homes to come. I'll slip into it on random occasions and twirl around my bedroom, remembering a day of such great happiness, such beauty, so perfectly me and G and us. 

Will I trash my dress, wading deeper into the lake for soulful, artful photographs? Doubtful. Will I throw a wedding gown and other fancy dress party? Perhaps. 

G is packing some of his wedding garb for our honeymoon to Seattle, and I'm envious on one level. Will he wear the clothes and relive the memories? Will the linen shirt and purple Chuck Taylors bring him back to a marriage of water and sand, of smiling faces, and swirling dances? Or will they lose their allure in the everyday? I can see both outcomes.

A wedding gown holds dreams, desires, intentions, and mostly, the woman who is moving between fiance and bride to wife. Ultimately, through all my questioning of what these roles are, I've found that the answer has always been to be, well, me. To live and love in the ways I know, and some ways I've yet to learn. And that is as, nay, more beautiful than a once-in-a-lifetime gown. 

blueberry season

blueberries, courtesy of wikipedia


In late July through early August, the sky buzzes with the whine of perilously low flying crop dusters and the groan of irrigation pumps. Welcome to rural western Michigan blueberry country, nestled between sand dunes and flat land. The sun burns bright and warm, turning the fields dusty and dry. The air smells of harvest--berries, corn, a hint of Lake Michigan--taking me back to childhood and those summers shaped by berry picking...



This was no idyllic time, even through my genuinely idealistic, optimistic child's view of the world. I longed for cool, rainy days when I could read with abandon, draw dress designs, or go back-to-school shopping at Rogers Department Store in nearby Grand Rapids.

Instead, long summer mornings and afternoons of my childhood were filled with field time. In the early days, my family and I composed the work crew. I even remember one afternoon that only grandma and I were in the field, picking berries and telling stories. As the fields multiplied and grew--from our off season work potting and planting new blueberry bushes--our labor force also grew. Neighborhood kids not working at another farm, kids from the now defunct Port Sheldon Presbyterian Church, and friends from school strapped buckets to their waists, eager to earn $.22 per pound. With a group of peers joining me in the field, picking became less of a chore and more of a social occasion. As the farmer's daughter/granddaughter, I thought I had special immunity from grandpa's gruff warnings and rules. When he yelled at my cousins I realized it was because of my follow-the-rules-don't-make-waves personality and not my last name.

By the time I was in high school, I started hauling a boom box into the field, pumping popular music into the fields. Discussion of how we would spend our hard-earned wages volleyed between the bushes. One year, when I was still in elementary school, I saved all summer to buy a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. Another summer I contemplated saving for a Gunne Sak dress. Always, my mind turned to fashion, even as I was wearing my oldest, berry stained clothes.

We would break for lunch, and I would eat sandwiches and drink pop from grandma and grandpa's garage fridge. Then I would lead the other kids in elaborate gymnastics routines, flipping and twisting and leaping across the front yard before heading back out into the fields for a few more hours of work. At the end of a long, hot day, I was happy if I picked 8-10 pails full, which would add up 50-70 pounds. There were legends of people who could pick 100 pounds a day. I was well on my way to buying one lovely fashion piece for the year to come.

As the bushes grew taller and bent with ripe fruit, hand picking gave way to machine picking, and my job moved indoors to the packing shed. I would stand along the conveyor belt picking out green, red, soft, diseased berries; twigs and leaves; and the occasional slimy slug (which I would only scoop up with an errant blueberry leaf). The wages were higher, the work less grueling, though perhaps more tedious and a little grosser, and more grown-up in nature. My mom, aunt, grandparents, and neighbor lady B all had our favorite positions along the belt...



The vinegary, dusky smell still wafts through my memory, and late this summer I could smell that distinct fragrance as I drove along the familiar roads of my childhood. One night Mom and I were driving back from town behind a truck, out of which debris was flying. We conjectured at the contents, and when we rolled down the windows and smelled that familiar processed berry cocktail, we knew for certain that the truck contained the detritus of machine picked and cleaned berries--a sludge of waste, headed perhaps to a local pig or turkey farm to continue the food cycle.

As I headed out the field the next morning with my aunt and young cousins, I gave into the pleasure of recreational picking--scatter picking the bushes, seeking out the most luscious berries to make our favorite "double good blueberry pie." I was glad to be home, my fingers remembering one activity so intrinsic to my formative years that my pail filled faster than anyone else's. I walked slowly back up the pine needle strewn path back up to my parents' house, swinging my full pail ever so gently, headed for the sanctuary of my parents' porch, a glass of ice tea, a J-Crew catalogue, and a half-finished novel begging to be read.