I’ve been helping my daughter, Emery, and her husband, Miles, clean, weed out, organize, and redistribute their things, which I’m learning means to take stuff out of their basement and put it in mine, in preparation to sell their house and move to Colorado. At one point, I asked Emery what she wanted me to do with her wedding dress, which looks like a white tent perched up against the wall of my upstairs cedar closet.
“Oh, I don’t know. I should probably have it cleaned, but I really don’t care. Just leave it.”
I asked too late. My girl, who says she doesn’t have one sentimental bone in her body, has moved on. No doubt the day will come when she’ll be grateful for what I will likely go ahead and do, which is have the dress professionally cleaned and boxed for proper storage. She may say she doesn’t have a sentimental bone in her body, but I’d rephrase that to say, “she’s selective with her sentimentality and the pieces she decides to let in, she’ll carry forever.” She just wasn’t ready to file this piece away as sentimental. It’s too soon, or maybe too late, but years down the road, she may feel a flutter in her heart when she sees the big box wrapped in brown paper on the closet shelf… most likely my closet shelf.
I remember going through similar feelings with my wedding dress, but I made myself take care of it the day after returning home from our honeymoon because I knew if I didn’t do it then, I never would, and my white satin gown would quickly yellow, and not in a cool, tea-stained, vintage sort of way, or so I was told. I did the research and ended up taking it to a cleaners that had been recommended to me, and for $50 I had it cleaned, wrapped in blue tissue to keep it white, boxed, and for that price, I assumed hermetically sealed. It was a considerable investment at the time, one-tenth of what the dress cost me, but everyone I spoke with insisted I shell out the money, as I’d regret it later if I didn’t.
For 28 years, that large box wrapped in brown paper sat in the back of the cedar closet in the home my husband and I raised our kids in, until one day, when my then-future daughter-in-law, Brooke, was in town and wanted to see what my wedding dress looked like. My husband and I had been divorced for ten years, and I had spent the afternoon at the house where we had raised our children when Brooke made the request. And just like Pandora’s box, when the box that had been sealed for the past 28 years was opened up, I never could have predicted that the most astonishing thing would not be that I could get it zipped up most of the way, but that it would be on file at the Leawood Police Department.
The promises the dry cleaners told me were upheld, and the dress looked as good as the day when I handed it over to them, except for the wrinkles, but I expected that. I was glad Brooke asked to see it, as I never would have been inclined to open the box, even a peek, let alone a try on. Afterwards, I brought the dress back to my house, box and all, but before I could do my best to box it up again, my daughter, Emery, wanted to have a look and try it on. Both she and Brooke were getting married in the coming year, and although they both already had their dresses, it was fun to be able to share this moment of my history with them.
After Emery tried on the dress and commented on it being pretty, but reminded her of Renaissance Festivals, I left the dress at the bottom of the stairs to be taken up to the cedar closet and folded back into its box when I had time.
Two days later, an unfortunate series of events unfolded, beginning with my impulsive decision to set the alarm system when I left the house, which I rarely did. I didn’t realize that the front door wasn’t completely latched when I left, and unbeknownst to me, it set off the alarm, and the police were called, while I was on my way to my exercise class. My sister was called because she’s listed as my “first call” in the event of the alarm going off. While I was twenty minutes into my exercise class, my sister, Robin, was standing on my front porch discussing the “incident” with the Leawood police.
By no means is what I’m about to say minimizing the work that the policemen do in my neighborhood or the respect I have for them, but it is a bit like Mayberry around here, and an alarm going off was noteworthy enough that two cars and four officers showed up to the scene. Of course, Robin could not enter the house once she arrived, as it was still considered a possible crime scene, although they said it didn’t look like there had been a break-in, as my computer was still on my bed, as well as some jewelry on the nightstand.
They did mention one thing to her, though, that they found a bit odd and wondered if she could make sense of it. There was a wedding gown on the floor at the bottom of the stairs…. Did she know anything about a wedding gown?
At that moment, as Robin related this story to me, I realized that just a few paces away from the wedding gown heap was something else they had seen but chose not to mention: a half-dozen empty wine bottles next to my sink. I had gathered them up to recycle, and although they were in close proximity to the gown, the two had absolutely no way, no how, anything to do with each other. Robin, of course, knew nothing of the dress but told the officers she was sure it was nothing. It was, however, her first question to me, which went something like this:
“Please tell me that you don’t put your wedding dress on at night and drink wine…”
I know there’s a big ole moral of the story in here somewhere, maybe something to do with following through with projects, being mindful when doing important things such as setting the house alarm or perhaps it’s taking care of the 2nd wedding dress in my upstairs closet so it, also, doesn’t end up in a photo in my file down at the station. But the moral I like to think about is that maybe my string of carelessness offered a bit of comic relief to a few of Leawood’s police officers, and a good story to take back to the station.
I continue to be hopeful that the officers on duty that day don’t sigh in pity when they drive by the house on High Drive where circumstantial evidence would have me traipsing around in a wrinkled mess of a wedding dress, most likely stained with wine… the Miss Havisham of Leawood, if you will. Maybe I should covet the incident that gave an otherwise quiet police department an unexpected laugh that morning.
Hours after the “incident,” the wrinkled mess of a dress was mashed right back into its box and put it on the shelf in the cedar closet, with plenty of room next to it for Emery’s eventually cleaned and boxed-up dress. Years down the road, it will be her adventure, not mine, if and when she decides to break the seal to see what’s inside, hopefully without police intervention.
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| Police files are confidential… this is the best I could do… |
