Handmade

Thank you all so much for your kind comments about our anniversary. We had a sweet celebration, and were thrilled to find that baby girl loves sleeping in restaurants! Now if only she would jump right into her crib when we get home and sleep until morning...that would really be something. Here on the home-front, we're all beginning to suffer the effects of newborn fatigue and too little routine. I know it's a strange sentiment, but I'm really looking forward to Big Brother's first day of kindergarten on Thursday. Yes, it will be the end of a season, but I think we're all going to benefit from the re-emergence of a regular pattern. So...

My mom made this dress for baby girl. She surprised me with it, as well as the sweet day gown that we dressed her in for the ride home from the hospital, a few weeks before I delivered. Every little detail of the dresses, from the sweet smocking to the tiny pearlized buttons to the blind hems, she did herself. Now, one of the reasons that I'm utterly amazed by this is that I have no idea how to do any of these things. Constructing a garment is one thing, but fine, delicate details that make such a garment an heirloom are another thing altogether. But what means more to me is that my sweet mom, in the midst of her very busy, full-time job and caring for my dad (among many other things), took the time to pour her heart into these special keepsakes for my daughter. Because even before meeting her, she loved her that much.

Sewing like this is a legacy from my grandmother, for whom baby girl is named. When I was little, she sewed all of my dresses from patterns and fabrics that my mom selected, and mom would finish them by doing the smocking. I have many memories of standing in the the middle of my grandparents' living room in tiny Waycross, GA, trying on nearly finished dresses so that the two of them could make final adjustments and pin the hems. It was excruciating to stand there, still, while they pored over the details, but the results were always worth it. On special occasions, like Easter, we might wrap things up and go downtown afterwards to pick a pair of matching flats at Mr. Schreiber's shoe store. Those memories--long afternoons, hot sun, satin sashes, and crisp new dresses for the drawn-out Sunday services at First Baptist Church--are all so precious to me, and somehow they all seem to be wrapped up in these little dresses. They seem to confirm that my daughter is a treasured part of a tradition that she barely knows, so far.

My grandmother holding my mother

Baby girl may never go to Waycross--my grandmother passed away shortly after Big Brother was born and there's no other family there--but she'll absorb the love and adoration and sense of family and heritage that that place epitomized for me through my mother. This sweet little dress, marked with a D, is a symbol of that. Of all she has inherited, just by being born.

This is why handmade gifts are so special. Thank you, Mom.