bird seeds..

I paid Kara to help me clean my closet today. I told her whatever change she finds on the floor is hers. She picked up $3.39, a brand new lip gloss…and my wedding dress from when I married her father.

Years ago she asked me what ever happened to it and I told her I still had it and if she ever wanted to use it, she could. I never let her see it though. Today she found it shoved in the back corner of my closet and wanted to see it. She opened it up in the kitchen and a huge smile spread across her face.

As she pulled it out I noticed how the sequins are now a bit yellowed. It changes the look of the dress. She shook it out and asked me if she could try it on. It was going to be much too big, but I couldn’t deny her request because she was so excited.

She stood there spinning around and modeling it. I noticed that some of the hooks that is holding the train to the dress had come undone. I told her to stop spinning for a moment so I could reattach them. I was transported back to my wedding day. I could see my brides maids gathered around the bottom of my dress trying to hook the tiny straps into the eyehooks. I was laughing telling them to hurry so I could get back out to the reception and one of them saying, “I am messing this up so bad! Half of the eyehooks are in the wrong place!” I told her I didn’t care.
I saw the eyehooks she had messed up today as I was trying to figure out how to attach them back onto the dress. 13 years later.

It’s strange how that dress represented something so huge at the time. Everything was centered around how perfect it had to be, but when the time came I remember thinking, “funny how 3 months ago I had to have THIS dress because it would make the me the perfect bride.”
and 5 minutes before the wedding my brides maids were accidentally ripping a hole in the under fluff and looking at me as if they had accidentally hit my dog.
“It’s okay Carrie. It’s just a dress.”
As I was walking up the 3 steps to get to my groom I got my foot caught in that hole and I tripped a little. I had to stop and get myself unstuck. It didn’t matter though. It didn’t matter that it was dragging all over the place and getting dirty either.

What mattered is I was getting married to the man I really loved. I loved the girls dad. I still do. He’s a retard sometimes, but he has a good heart.

Seeing the dress just reminded me of a really happy moment in my life. I didn’t think that I would ever look back at my wedding and be able to remember a moment with such clarity and be able to label it as ‘happy’.
I’m grateful that I am not so bitter that I can’t enjoy those moments.

Kara took the dress off and put it back in the closet.

There is birdseed on my kitchen floor from 13 years ago.