Just Get The Tighter Dress

“Just get the tighter dress,” I encouraged; though that wasn’t what I’d said at first.

My daughter and I were dress shopping last minute for her upcoming Homecoming dance that was happening in two days. I’d just crammed a marathon of activities into the earlier part of the school day, including an emergency dental appointment for one kid, rushing food to another who’d forgotten to eat breakfast or lunch, and then reshuffling around my cross-country kid’s carpool since I couldn’t be in three places at once.

I was at the bottom of my mom energy barrel.

What I needed was just to stare at a wall and drool, honestly, not go dress shopping with my two daughters. But we were out of time. I would be out of town the following day so there were literally no other options.

My first comment when my daughter had tried on the tighter dress had been, “It looks great on you. But I’m not going to pay $120 for a dress you are going to outgrow before you can even wear it again. Try the next size up.”

My daughter’s face fell but she tried the next size on anyway. “I don’t like this one as much because it doesn’t look the same right here”—my daughter gestured to a certain section of the dress.

I could see her point. It did look different—but just barely. To me as a mom, it was almost imperceptible. To her as a teenager, it was a HUGE gaping difference.

I honestly didn’t have the brain space to make ANY decisions at this point, much less wise ones. All I really wanted to do was be in my pajamas at home with a hot cup of tea. I couldn’t do any more adulting for the day. I even entertained thoughts for a moment of having my 15-year-old drive me home, though she hadn’t had any behind-the-wheel training yet.

Probably not a good idea.

And somehow, just barely, I was able to stay focused on the epic dress moment at hand.

“Try some of the other dresses just in case you like one of them better,” I suggested.

My daughter did like some of the other dresses, but at the end of it all decided that she liked the first dress the best—the tighter one. So she tried it on again.

“The zipper doesn’t even make it all the way up to the top,” I commented.

“Yes it does,” she adamantly replied.

Meanwhile, my other high schooler who wasn’t attending Homecoming was also trying on dresses. “Mom, look at me. What do you think of this dress? I love it so much.”

Back and forth it went for a while between mom-and-alternating-daughter commentary. They both looked so stunning. And just as I couldn’t figure out what to do about buying the $120 dress that was too tight, I also couldn’t figure out how to tell my other daughter that I couldn’t buy her a $100 dress for a dance that she wasn’t attending.

This is your brain on exhaustion, I thought, and I chuckled to myself for my dorky play on words from a very old say-no-to-drugs commercial.

At some point, the wisdom in my spirit must have poured into my consciousness—probably because my soul was checked out and staring at the wall outside the dressing room.

An internal dialogue started within me:

Did YOU ever wear your high school Homecoming dress more than once?

Well…no.

What do you want your daughter to remember years from now—wearing a dress that she absolutely loved or being forced to buy a different size to accommodate her mom?

Ouch.

You know what to do.

And I did.

And somehow, despite all the brain-blitzed odds stacked against me, I was still able to tap into the deep wisdom inside my heart to buy my daughter the dress that she loved. It went against all the logic in my head. It went against all my thrifty-mom beliefs cause I knew that it would take us multiple payments to pay it off. And I didn’t regret my decision one bit.

“Just get the tighter dress,” I encouraged her.

I finally realized that I wasn’t just buying my daughter a gift in the present but that I was also depositing one into her future. And that kid’s eyes radiated with joy on the car ride home. “Thanks, Mom,” my daughter called out to me over the freeway noise.

“You’re welcome. I’m so glad you got the one that you wanted.”

And I meant it.

❤ Nova