October 16

About a month ago, Abby decided that she wanted to go to Homecoming this year. She opted out sophomore year because of the whole other-people's-back-sweat-is-prevalent-and-gross issue from the freshman experience. And then there was the whole COVID thing that was her junior year. But as a senior, she wanted to go. And she wanted to make her own dress. So she bought the fabric, and then mostly looked at it for a few weeks. Don't get it wrong: she made a little preliminary mock-up of the bodice and discovered she didn't have enough fabric so I headed off to buy a few yards more. But yeah, she mostly looked at it.

But then this morning, as Adam and I headed off to our Alpha course at church (ask me about that, especially if you're local and would like to learn about Christianity!), she was hard at work. She'd re-worked the bodice and was busily pinning and measuring and re-pinning and re-measuring. 

When Adam and I got home at around 2, she was toiling away at her sewing machine. I left her to her work, but silently wondered --for the umpteenth time-- if she'd given herself enough time to finish, since she was supposed to be at a friend's house for pictures at 4:30. Her shoes arrived via Amazon at about 2:30 (and how perfect are they? I was thrilled when I pulled them out of the box). And I could hear the hum of the sewing machine upstairs.

Then at 3:40, her door opened and I heard her squeak "mom" in a decidedly panicked tone, so I headed upstairs and found her holding her mostly constructed dress. Near tears, she showed me how she'd inadvertently run a line of teeny tiny stitches across the bottom portion of the bodice. I took a breath, asked for her seam ripper, and got to work. Then I sent her into her bathroom to do her hair. When she returned a little later, I was still in stitch removal mode (because let me tell you, it's really hard to remove stitches from satin without ripping it) so I sent her back to the bathroom to do her makeup, which she did.

Already long story shorter, she finally got into the dress. A wee mishap with the zipper (spoiler alert: it broke) meant that I had to sew her into it, but she's wearing it. And from the front, it looks so, so beautiful.

Since I knew she was rattled and (and 40 minutes late), I drove her over to her friend's house for pictures (and then left her the truck -- Adam drove separately in my car to take me home after). As we rode together, I thought about how gorgeous she looked and about how she doesn't believe me when I tell her that she's beautiful. And I thought about how I hoped that she was proud of herself for designing (did I mention that part? No pattern. Her design) her dress and then bringing that simple sketch to life. And I hoped that she would have a good time with her best friends and that she would make a memory or two that would turn into a good story down the line. (So here she is with a few of them -- she's the lovely in pink in the center. And her two best friends, Gracie and Holly, are both in black boots on the right.)

But mostly, I thought about how richly God blessed me when He decided that I should be her mother. She may be a beautiful almost-17 year old with an amazing eye for fashion design and a huge smile, but more importantly to me, she's my one and only girl, and I couldn't be more proud of who she is.