The Old Dress

My 1970s keepsake...

I published the following meditation a couple years ago when I had under 150 subscribers. Now that I have nearly 700, I think it’s time the newbies heard the story all over again, because it’s one of my favorites. Enjoy!

---

One of my most cherished possessions is the dress below. It made its debut at my parents’ wedding in the early 1970s.

Maybe ten or more years ago, my Aunt Marilyn asked me if I’d like one of the bridesmaid dresses from my Mom and Dad’s wedding. Did I ever! I can’t recall if it’s the dress my Aunt Marilyn wore or if it was one of my other two aunts.’ Whomever it belonged to, it fits me almost perfectly. The sleeves are just a hair short, but it doesn’t bother me any.

Aunt Marilyn and I share a love of old stuff and she has gifted me with several old treasures that I cherish to this day including a set of antique Mildred pattern china.

My mom kept a file box full of old family photos, and when I was a little girl one of my favorite things to do was to take each file folder out and study the pictures inside. I have spent countless hours studying my mom and dad’s wedding photos. And I crafted the outfit in these photos based on those memories.

Mom was a tiny little wisp of a 20-year-old and my dad was an absolute shaggy bear at 27, looking for all the world like he’d robbed the cradle. He was a hippie (for real) with his long hair and bushy beard and big glasses. He informed me once that he had toned the beard down some with a trim just for the wedding and mostly for his folks who did not approve of him being a hippie. Staring at the wild locks and bushy beard as a youngster, I found it hard to believe he trimmed it with much, if any, commitment.

The bridesmaids, my mom’s three sisters, Marilyn, Louise, and Karen, all wore handmade dresses just like the one in my photos. Aunt Karen’s hair was about as long as mine is now, Aunt Marilyn, more shoulder length or a little below, with Aunt Louise’s the shortest. They all wore wide brimmed floppy hats and carried baskets of flowers…daisies I think. My mom had a simple empire waist, a-line gown with a similar wide brimmed hat and carried a bouquet of daisies…if I remember right.

My parents got married in a fever to quote Johnny Cash. They met at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI. It was like something out of a fairy tale. Mom was playing her cello in the pit orchestra for a concert and Dad’s beautiful baritone voice wafted down from the stage above to charm her. She fell in love with the voice before she fell in love with the man. And it was mutual. Before they even met, Mom walked by Dad one day while he conversed with his piano professor, Phyllis Rappaport, and my dad remarked to her, “I’m going to marry that girl.” Pretty bourgeois for a hippie. But amore, ya know?

The amount of time that passed between dating and marrying was astonishingly short. My mom can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it was something like three months. After the engagement, my mom contracted a case of cold feet, and my dad in his somewhat hotheaded, Italian fashion handed down an ultimatum, “You’ve got a week to figure this out.”

She decided to marry him, admitting later on that her reasoning was, “If it doesn’t work out, I can always get a divorce.” The sexual revolution was now nearly over and “progress” had ensured an easy out to a less than stellar decision. Fighting all the time? Just file for divorce! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

They could have been the classic example of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure. After all, literally everything was against them: The Marxist-loving times, their poverty, the economic crash right around the corner, their tempers, and their talent.

I frequently laugh into my sleeve when my fellow millennials moan and groan about their financial lot in life and about how hard it is to make end’s meet and get ahead…as if no young people have ever been this put upon in all of American history. The fact of the matter is that young couples have had it hard at many times, let’s face it…most of the time throughout history. My parents were no exception.

They left their wedding reception on bicycles (they didn’t own a car) to spend a night or two at the local hotel. After that, they rented a series of apartments, barely scraping by on my dad’s meager salary while Mom tried to finish her Bachelor’s. Then…she got pregnant. My grandma Barber almost had a panic attack. “How are you going to pay for this?!?” (Grandma went on to experience at least three more panic attacks, followed by the five stages of grief, and then fell in love with all four of us in time.)

Nevertheless, it was a valid question. But somehow, the bills got paid. There were times, though, when they didn’t even have money for food and they subsisted on saltine crackers and strawberry jam. Neither of them came from wealth. Their parents had only managed to dip a toe into lower middle class, so neither set of parents had much to give, even though they probably wanted to.

Financial stress was only one difficulty. Before the end of the first year, my dad had converted to Christianity, which nobody understood. After all, wasn’t he raised in the United Methodist church? Wasn’t he already a Christian for that reason? Mom thought the whole thing was a real drag. But then, she got a hold of a Gospel tract, prayed the prayer at the end, and waited a while to see if it would take before she told anybody. It did.

But God doesn’t simply solve all problems with conversion. They both had tempers. Dad’s was the stereotypical, Italian hotheadedness. But mom’s temper, or so Dad told me, was a magnificent thing to behold and so very surprising coming from such a person of diminutive comportment and stature. They were both enormously talented; Dad as an operatic baritone and Mom as a fine cellist. They both had opportunities to further their own careers, and they locked horns over how much time this would require them to be apart. By year two, they were fighting constantly, and the marriage was officially on the rocks.

But God did not let them go.

At some point in all of this, they both thought, “I wonder what the Bible has to say about how marriage is supposed to work?” They both purposed to find out and do whatever it said.

Isn’t that remarkable? They didn't decide to do whatever it said if they liked it or if it was convenient or if it coincided with the prevailing notions of the 1970s. They determined to find out what it said…and do it.

And they did. And that is why I exist.

That is why I grew up in a home with my two biological parents in it. That is why I didn’t get shuffled from Mom’s place during the week to Dad’s place on the weekends. That’s why I couldn’t play Mom against Dad, or Dad against Mom. That’s why I knew that if Mom said it, then Dad would enforce it; and if Dad said it, then Mom would enforce it. They were a united front, a trellis that supported my growth, a force to be reckoned with. Because they believed in finishing things they started, including their own marriage, I learned to finish the things I started. They got through a lot of baggage and bad ideas and outright lies they imbibed before marriage and gave me a head start in mine. Their beginning was turbulent. Sometimes, I even witnessed the residue of that turbulence. But because of what I witnessed and how they always resolved it, I skipped the turbulent early years of marriage. My marriage is restful and peaceful and joyful because of what my parents taught me.

So…once again, this thing, this dress, this inanimate object…means much to me. It’s not just old and pretty. It reminds me that God is faithful and merciful. It reminds me that He changes people. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that people can’t change. It’s not true. My parents changed, dramatically. They were faithful to each other for nearly fifty years until my dad passed away in 2021. And though there were difficulties and disagreements and even arguments, I had an internal sense of bedrock confidence that they were never leaving each other for any reason.

It’s how every child should grow up. It’s not lost to me that most children in the U.S. do not have that, and I grow ever more grateful for what I was given the older I get. I see the ripple effects of broken and miserable marriages and homes and of fatherlessness nearly every way I look. There’s so much pain in so many faces. But that is one pain in my life I got to skip.

Thanks be to God for His mercy, His grace, and His faithfulness.

Well, that’s all for now. Until next time, folks…

If you enjoyed this piece, you’d help me a bunch by getting me a coffee!

And get out the word about my writing by sharing on your favorite social media platform or through text and email. Thanks, everyone!