Marriage is a blessing and a wonderful thing in life. It is a tremendous
undertaking and can bring joy and happiness.
However, wedding preparation can bring terror.
The plan was simple. My friend Billi Jo was coming Friday to help Kari. They are
both accomplished seamstresses and can work wonders with all that lovely and expensive
fabric to craft an elegant and beautiful gown that reflected the personality and beauty of Tianna. It was going to be a fait accompli – they bring together their considerable
skills and I stand ready at the ironing board to press seams. I am a very
skilled ironer… very, very skilled.
Plans changed in ways that NO ONE could have expected.
A tornado literally wrecked my younger sister Xan’s home on Friday during some pretty horrible storms in our area. Billi Jo was originally set to arrive on
Friday, then on Saturday but then their son's Cub Scout Pinewood Derby needed to be moved so they arrived on
Sunday after church about the time we decided to go out and help at Xan’s broken home to box up their life that
could be salvaged from the ravages of the storm. Weather sucks lemons here during
tornado season. More especially so in an area that is already wounded and weary
from the damage that pounded it only a few months ago. But it really sucks bitter lemons for my sister's family because their house is toast...
wet, soggy, mildewing and molding toast. It will be months and months before
they can return home. That breaks my heart in ways that words cannot cover. So their suffering makes what follows pale in comparison and I do not intend
to create some kind of line between the two to make them equal in any measure.
They are not nor will they ever be equal. They have lost their house. I just lost
my composure. I don't mean any disrespect to them by writing what follows.
When Monday morning rolled around, Xan’s family was gathered in at Daddy’s place and trying to
come to grips with the gypsy-like existence that would be theirs for a while.
From his home to their home to his again, their day-to-day has been disrupted
in ways that trump any wedding plans and bridal angst.
But, as they say in the biz, the show must go on and time was a wastin’ and we
were burning daylight. We had a dress to create and precious little time to do
it in… Spring Break is only ONE WEEK LONG!! I’m hearing the music to “Final Countdown” playing in my head…
Monday, Monday… can’t trust that day… or our own pitiful minds. I think we
worked on the dress for 14 hours… not kidding here. 14 hours. Sacrifices must
be made. Sanity must be tested. Satin must be cut by better hands than mine…
But it was not to be… scissors were thrust into my trembling hands and the
pronouncement of doom settled in. They, the two experienced, skilled, gifted,
brilliant and wonderful seamstresses in the form of Kari and Billi Jo had
apparently lost their minds sometime between Friday after the tornado and
Monday morning.
They decided that I needed
to cut the material. REALLY!?!?!?! ARE YOU FREAKIN’ KIDDING ME??????
I can HEAR my heart beating now and see my life flash before my eyes as
everyone in the entire universe knows that the only thing I have managed to sew
in DECADES is three pair of PAJAMA pants!! That is NOTHING like cutting up
SATIN for a bride’s gown!!
Flannel is flannel. It’s not “precious” like wedding fabric. Wedding fabric
is expensive and precious and not to be trifled with by unskilled labor and
trembling hands. I begged, I pleaded and I flat out cried… I can’t be trusted
to not make a mess of this!!!
My soon to be daughter will NEVER forgive me if I mess this up!
HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
At this point, I was hyperventilating and crying and unable to be rational.
The other three women in the room sew. They have skill. I can build a campfire
and that generally isn’t considered useful when crafting a wedding gown for a
bride.
I haven’t heard of very many curtain calls for gals who can cook Dutch oven
food, set up tarps for a campsite area or who are conversant with fishing
tackle when it comes to sewing a dress. They aren’t complementary skills. At least I don't consider them to be complementary. Yet
the delusional women at the church on Monday somehow equated all those camping and survival skills
with the ability to cut out wedding material without screwing up.
Did someone pass out drugs and I missed the baggie? That must certainly be
the explanation for why they were smilingly pressing ultra-sharp scissors into
MY unskilled and trembling hands demanding that I sink the blades deep into the
gleaming bridal fabrics!!!
For the record, when your heart is beating so loudly that you can hear it
outside of your own body, that isn’t a good thing. It’s a scary thing. It means
something isn’t right.
Trusting that I would either sell my plasma or mortgage my house and sell my jewelry to replace the
material I was sure I was about to destroy, I did what they said to do.
We, Tianna and I, carefully (and in my case TEARFULLY) pinned the pattern pieces
on the material in very specific alignments. Some had to be “cut on the fold”.
I learned that meant the fabric had to be folded, not the pattern piece. Some
had to be aligned with the grain of the fabric and I learned that had nothing
to do with bread or cereal. There was selvage and bias and edging and all kinds
of new vocabulary that had nothing to do with camping. And my head was reeling.
The scissors were in my hand, a gigantic lump was in my throat and the most
fervent prayer I’m sure that has ever been uttered over a piece of yard goods
was in my heart and mind as both a plea and a mantra… “DON’T LET ME MESS THIS
UP, LORD! PLEASE DON’T LET ME MESS THIS UP!”
For those who sew confidently and without hesitation, this seems ridiculous.
They laugh as if I have been made privy to some special inner circle that is a joy to behold.
For those who do not sew, I am certain you share my dread and terror. This is
about to be an action that isn’t just removing me from my comfort zone… this is
removing me from the entire comfort planet!
I desperately desire to do the right things the right way with this horribly
frightening task and not waste fabric or leave the bride-to-be with dribbly
little fabric shreds to be run up by loving hands at home so that she looks
like she is wearing nothing more than a satiny feed sack.
My trembling hands had to be stilled by a sheer force of will and mighty
prayer. I took the first tender, tentative cut into the fabric. It might have
been an inch long. I was on my knees crawling along beside the fabric trying
not to touch it, or bump it, or alter the trajectory of the snipping of the scissors
in any way that would make them veer from the dark black razor thin line that
separated deftness from disaster by the slimmest margin. If you mess up, you
can’t shout “take backs” and hit the redo button on the gaming console.
While I don’t know that a sewing game would bring in money to the developers,
a 3-D experience might help gun-shy novices like me to either develop more
confidence or cement the fact that not everyone was sent to the earth to have
the same experiences in life. Either way, it would be less terrifying than
looking at the scissors “snick snick snicking” their way through the shiny and
matte finished fabric.
Did you know when you are terrified, sound and sensation is amplified? Did
you also know you can will your pores to suck back up the beads of sweat that
threaten to dampen and stain bridal silk… yeah, me neither, but it happened.
When finally the first piece was cut out, I discovered that I was not fast
enough and using the wrong scissors. I had inadvertently picked up the pair
with “short blades” and I needed to use the larger ones. Holy cow! I thought
those were pruning shears! I was assured that the freshly sharpened implements
of death and destruction… uh, I mean fabric shears… were the very tool I needed
to “work my way through the fabric quicker”.
Not only do they expect me to cut along the lines, but they want speed
too???
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE WOMEN?!?! You either get accurate or fast. Not both.
Again, I hear the experienced seamstresses of the world laughing their heads
off at my distress. I’ll try to be more charitable when you show up to my
campfire starving to death after a long day on the pioneer trail…
Trying to keep perspective about this exercise in humility and prayer, I
kept reminding myself that there was greater tragedy in the world than my being
handing sewing shears. Funny thing was that I was having a great deal of
trouble coming up with more than Xan's tornado damaged home… that sort of wiped
out pretty much everything else.
I persevered.
Finally, the fourteen hour day was over! I wasn’t dead!! The fabric was
thankfully not ruined! I could live another day secure in the knowledge that I
hadn’t destroyed the chance of eternal happiness for Tianna and Thomas!
When I came home to share my angst, Rick was NOT sympathetic. Not one
smidgen. Instead, he took the side of the tormentors and even hinted and talked outright
about how “wonderful” it was for me to have this “ great experience”.
Yeah, and panic
attacks are a legitimate form of exercise…
I wasn’t having any luck finding anyone who understood my terror and beginning
to feel rather put upon that no one was grasping the severity of my feelings of
having survived the crucible. Either everyone in the world secretly sews
brilliantly from the moment they leave the womb, or there is some target which
is visible only to others that tells the world that I deserve these
opportunities of forced humility and prayer because I am so evil and wicked the
rest of the time.
For the record, I have prayed more this last week over this dress and in
particular the fabric pieces I touched than I have prayed over any other
clothing related issue including my OWN wedding dress that Kari fashioned 27+
years ago.
The dress is beautiful! It is more than beautiful… it is astounding. Billi Jo and Kari did in a week what is a feat
beyond understanding. They made a
wedding gown that will knock Thomas’ socks off. Tianna will be a beautiful
bride.
And the good news is that I can relax for the time being… no one needs
anything cut out or sewed up this next week. Thank heavens!
I don’t think I like that cardio program. I’m not entirely sure that panic
attacks are all that good for my heart.
