small and orange

I felt a bit of a pang as I looked at the beloved bright orange dress lying in the trash can one more time before shutting the lid. It was a gift for the Girl from her Beema, purchased in Thailand years ago. Just that morning I eyed it’s tattered too shortness as she ran, bare legs flashing, and thought, “It would make a cute baby doll top if I just repaired that torn side seam.”

Then I saw the holes in the back where she used a concrete banister at the beach as a slide. Holes I repaired last summer, now returned. Still I thought I could save it once again, preserve it’s usefulness yet another year. After all, I had thought it beyond hope after a camping trip rendered it filthy, but that washed out with a bit of hand scrubbing.

But that night, as I picked it up off the floor, covered in stains from the blueberry cobbler, I was just too tired to think of washing, patching and sewing this rag of a dress anymore. Without a word to anyone I quietly dropped it in the trash and there it lay, bright and impossibly cheerful against the dirt and scraps beneath it.

She will miss it eventually. She has a mind like an elephant that one. I wonder if I did the right thing. I hope she will remember the 3 dresses I’ve sewn her this year, the countless times I’ve repaired her hopelessly dirty and damaged playthings, and that this one discarded dress, however well loved, will not weigh too heavy in her childish mind. I need energy for other things this year, like listening and being present more often. I know this. I know that will be a better use of the hour I would spend in repairs.

But still, I wonder. In my mind’s eye is a bright, fluttery little dress floating away from me where I can’t reach it anymore. Not unlike this childhood of hers that drifts slightly further away from me every single day.