Before
Becca Darling adored the color pink. Her wardrobe was full to bursting with clothes of every hue, shade and tint of that color. She was invited by a friend to attend the opening of Swan Lake by the Royal NZ Ballet and she wanted a fabulous dress to wear to the event. She had a local seamstress that she used for this kind of thing and she asked for the most spectacular dress to be made for her. On the day she went for her final fitting she stood in front of the mirror and was so excited by what she saw in the mirror that she literally could not think of anything to say. If you knew Becca Darling you would understand what a huge thing that was – Becca loved to talk!
What she saw in the mirror was this – a very simply cut long dress with fine spaghetti straps. The magical part of the dress was that there were tiny pieces of fabric sewn all over it which almost looked like leaves on a tree. Every piece of this fabric was dyed a different shade of pink. It began from the top of the dress which was such a pale pink that it almost looked cream to the tiny train at the bottom of the dress which was such a vibrant crimson that you almost had to look away. In between was every hue of pink – blush, watermelon, rose, coral, fuchsia, salmon, bubblegum, crepe, magenta and every other you could think of.
It was quite simply the most beautiful dress that Becca Darling had ever seen and she could not wait to wear it to the ballet opening. The evening came and the sumptuous dress was slipped over her head and teamed with some stunning slippers she had found in a local shoe store. These matched the crimson at the bottom of her dress perfectly. She looked and felt like a million dollars!
During the interval of the ballet Becca needed to use the toilet but when she went to do this the line of ladies waiting was very long. Directly opposite the ballet theatre was a movie complex that had a lot of toilets so she popped across the road to use these instead. She walked into the toilet area where two young girls were washing their hands. She went into a stall and then she heard one of the girls say to the other “She looks like a princess” to which the other girl replied “she really does”.
At that moment Becca decided that this dress needed to go to Mrs. Hopes Second Chance Emporium so that some other lucky buyer could be a princess! During Becca did exactly what she planned and dropped off the dress to Mrs. Hope about a week after the ballet. In the bag there were some other clothes she had not worn in a while (yes, they were all pink).
During
One of Mrs. Hope’s favorite things to do was to open the bags, boxes, baskets and containers that people dropped off to her because it was a bit like Christmas – you never knew what you were going to find. On the morning she opened the bag from Becca Darling she felt something that only happened rarely – she really wanted to keep an item for herself.
She took out the princess dress from the bag and shook it out so that she could see it better. The effect was like shaking a magnolia tree – every shade of pink ruffled from tiny pieces of material that were expertly stitched onto the simplest of dresses.
She fell in love with it immediately and wanted very much to keep it for herself. However, Mrs. Hope was always practical and the simple truth was that she lived in a tiny town where opportunities to wear such a dress would be few.
What she did next was something that just popped into her head from that mysterious place where the best of ideas come from. Mrs. Hope loved watching movies and she always tried to watch all the Oscar nominated movies every year in order to choose the one she thought would win.
She decided that this year she would wear the magical dress for the Oscars while sitting at home, sipping champagne and then she would put the dress on her favorite mannequin at the store and pass it along to another lucky shopper who needed a dress such as this.
Mrs. Hope firmly believed that some of the things in her shop waited for the perfect person to arrive and pick them up and she was certain that this would be the case for the dress. She was a little bit wrong and a lot right.
The Oscars night came and Mrs. Hope did quite well with her predictions – the right movie won and her pick of favorite actress gave a lovely speech. The whole night was ruined by a man whose ego believed it was acceptable for him to strike another. Later in the show he had the opportunity to apologize for his actions but he chose not to. Mrs. Hope was saddened by this stupid and senseless act of violence that was witnessed by millions of people at a time in history when the world desperately needed things to celebrate.
The next morning Mrs. Hope put the dress on the mannequin and waited with excited anticipation to see who its intended owner would be. Because the dress was so beautiful a number of ladies saw it and wanted to buy it on the very day it was displayed but it did not fit them.
About half an hour before closing time a lady popped in, saw the dress and decided to buy it. She also bought a pair of shoes and when she took them both to the counter to pay for them Mrs. Hope was dismayed to see that she was not ecstatic about the dress at all, in fact she had not even tried it on.
She left the shop with a bag that contained an offering of perfection that she simply did not appreciate.
After #1
The lady in question was at Mrs. Hopes Second Chance Emporium that day to fill in time while she waited for the next train to Carterton to visit her sister. She purchased her ticket, got on the train and enjoyed her journey very much. In fact she was so taken with the scenery that when she got to her stop, she did not recognize it until the last moment. She quickly got up and was off the train just in time for it to move to its next stop.
She had left her bag of purchases from the funny wee second-hand store behind. She shrugged her shoulders and thought “ah well, it doesn’t really matter” and she walked away not giving it a second thought.
After #2
Grace Maltese was getting married in two days’ time and she was very excited about everything … except the dress. Grace and her fiancé were not wealthy but because this was going to be a once in a lifetime day, she had gone to a local seamstress to have the perfect dress made for her.
The only problem with that was that Grace really didn’t have a clear idea of what she wanted and because she was unsure the well-meaning seamstress had kindly taken over and by the day of her final fitting Grace realized that she truly hated the dress she had spent so much money on.
For a start it was white which really did not suit her complexion at all and it was – there is just no other word for it, it was puffy, very, very puffy! She looked in the mirror on that final fitting day and she knew that she looked exactly like a great big white meringue but she was far too kind to say that to the seamstress who took her quietness for rapt excitement and overwhelming happiness at the final product.
That had been a week ago and as she stood waiting for her train, she allowed herself one minute of self-pity, it was a trick she had learned from her lovely husband to be Andy. He would literally put the timer on his phone for one minute, allow whatever he was feeling to come to the surface and then let it go again when the timer beeped. It usually worked well and allowed both of them not to wallow when bad things came their way.
On this day however Grace’s mental timer went off but she could not pull herself out of it again – she knew that she had gotten herself into this mess but she was still heartbroken at the thought of marrying her perfect person while looking like a great big powder puff. She knew she should have spoken up more with the seamstress but she was quite a forceful lady and it had just felt easier to go along with her suggestions and she kept saying to herself “How bad could it be?” until that day when she looked in the full-length mirror at the seamstress shop and realized – Oh dear this is how bad it could be!
She didn’t have the money for another dress and on this cold and windy day she allowed her self-pity to overwhelm her – it had been a really busy day at the hospital where she worked as a nurse, her feet hurt and she knew she looked exactly the way she felt inside – a great big mess. She looked down the railway tracks and could see at last the train coming to take her home where she planned to have a long hot bath and get over herself. It didn’t matter what she wore to marry Andy – a dress was not a marriage after all and unless a miracle arrived, she was just going to have to make her peace with looking like a billowing truffle.
Grace got onto the train at Carterton and took a seat with a window. She noticed the brown carrier bag immediately and looked inside. All she could see was a froth of pink – every pigment of that color kind of exploding out of the bag and realized that someone had left the bag and its contents behind. She asked the train conductor what she should do with the bag, the man in question looked at the bag, its contents and said “It’s from a second-hand store in Featherston so it’s not worth very much, you can either take it yourself or I will put it in the rubbish bin at the next stop.
Grace said that she would hold onto it and she spent the rest of her journey feeling like she used to on Christmas Eve when she was little – certain that the big day would never arrive except that on this occasion she felt like the train would never get to her stop so that she could see what the dress really looked like. It was possible that it was going to be hideous – all that pink could be too much … but what if it wasn’t? What if this was the dress of her dreams sent to her by a second-hand angel? Her stop finally came into view, she picked up the bag, took a deep breath and pretended that she was not in a state of distraction and managed to alight from the train without falling over.
She went immediately to the ladies’ toilets and locked herself into the cubicle – she plunged her hand into the bag and then pulled out the dress, she closed her eyes gave it a shake and then opened them again. In her hands was the most stunning dress she had ever seen, it had petals of fabric which ranged from palest to deepest pink and then her heart sank – what if it did not fit? She quickly took off her scrubs and popped it over her head, it floated down around her as though it was made just for her. She opened the cubicle door so that she could see herself in the mirror over the sinks and it was a miracle – even with no makeup and her hair in disarray she could see that she looked beautiful, truly beautiful in fact she thought to herself “I look like a princess!”
After #3
Mr. and Mrs. Hope arrived for the wedding with time to spare and took seats towards the front. Mrs. Hope had met Grace and Andy through the store and she was so excited that two such lovely people had found each other and had also been smart enough to realize it. Other guests arrived, then the bridesmaids came down the aisle and then finally everyone stood up for the bride’s big entrance.
Mrs. Hope very nearly exclaimed out loud but managed to stop herself in time. Somehow Grace was wearing her Oscars dress and she could not imagine how that had happed but she could not have been more delighted that it had. It was as though Grace had been lit up from inside – she glowed with happiness and the dress fit her as though it had been made just for her, truth be told it had been a little tight on Mrs. Hope.
She quickly turned her head to look at Andy and the look on his face was priceless, he looked completely overwhelmed and Mrs. Hope saw a tear before he quickly wiped it away. In short, he looked like the luckiest man on earth to have this beautiful woman heading his way and Mrs. Hope knew it would be a memory he would hold onto for the rest of his life.
She turned back to Grace who was almost up to her isle – never had she seen such a beautiful bride and never had she been so proud to own the store that had somehow managed to get this dress to that bride. In fact, thought Mrs. Hope – “she looks like a princess.”