Object-ives #41: The Little Green Dress

An object, a moment, and the long arc that followed

“Oh my gosh—that dress…” I said to my best friend Robert when I spotted it hanging in a Kathmandu shop as we were walking back to our guesthouse after dinner. “I need to hold it.”

The tiny green dress, hanging among sarongs, woollen jackets, and bedspreads, looked like it might fit a 1- or 2-year-old. It was made of green silk, stitched with tiny mirrors and threaded with red and orange embroidery.

The shopkeeper sighed when I asked him to take it down. He was closing up, already half gone for the night. I watched him hook it from the window and place it in my hands. Up close, the dress was heavier than it looked. I pressed it against my chest. The shopkeeper explained that it was from Rajasthan, and that the mirrors were meant to ward off evil spirits.

I was in my early twenties, working as a hostess in Japan and spending the money on travel. My life plans extended only as far as the next rave, the next full moon party. I couldn’t imagine a future that included any kind of permanence or settling down—never mind becoming a mother. And yet, something about this dress stirred a feeling I’d never experienced before.

“I think I’ve just had a vision,” I whispered to Robert. “I’m going to have a little girl with shiny black hair. And this is her dress.”

I felt foolish saying it, the certainty so out of character. I tried to laugh it off and hand the dress back to the shopkeeper, but I couldn’t. Buying that dress wasn’t a choice.

Robert must have thought I was having a momentary lapse, or that the party drugs were talking. It must have made him sad.

Robert was in love with me. I’d known for years. I’d told him I wasn’t attracted to him that way. We’d road-tripped to the Grand Canyon, gone to countless concerts, and now we were in Nepal to hike the Himalayas. He knew my stories. My messes. My exes. I trusted him completely, even as I refused the future he quietly imagined.

He didn’t try to talk me into or out of buying the dress that night. He knew it wasn’t about the money, or the lack of space in my already full backpack.

Two years later, I gave birth to a baby girl with thick black hair. My marriage to her Japanese father was unexpected and unconventional. The baby—my surprise.

As soon as she could walk, I had the sleeves taken up by a neighborhood tailor and dressed her in it. She loved touching the mirrors, fiddling with the hem. One fall afternoon, back in Canada while visiting my parents, my father and I took her to Stanley Park and tried to photograph her in the dress. She wouldn’t sit still. She ran toward the water, the mirrors flashing as she moved, her laughter carried by the wind.

When my little girl turned six, my marriage ended. We left Japan and were staying with my parents. Robert helped me unload my shipping container of belongings, gave me a computer, and lent me his car.

A few months later, I woke one morning wishing Robert was lying beside me.

That little girl is 28 now. I still wake up beside Robert each morning. The first thing I see when I open my eyes is the dress, hanging from an elephant hook above the green dresser at the foot of our bed.

“Remember the night you bought that?” Robert asked yesterday. “We were so young.”

Dhana Musil is a Canadian writer whose work has appeared in Grain, The Ex-Puritan, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She writes personal essays and narrative nonfiction that explore memory, place, and interesting subcultures. She lives in British Columbia.

Object-ives features flash nonfiction essays of 500-999 words on the possessions we can’t stop thinking about.

Recommended reading on possessions:

“My Collection of Etch a Sketch feat. Princess Etch” by Adam Starr, My Collection Of

“The Safety of Objects” by Sita Turner, The Hopeless Millennial

“THE DEATH-PUDDING CONTAINER” by Kelli Dunham, The Keepthings

“You’ve Been Shopping for a Woman Who Isn’t Coming” by Micaela Lynn, A Home That Shuts Up

“‘Toy Story’ Convinced Me My Toys Had Feelings—and I’m Still Dealing With It” by Juliana LaBianca, Good Housekeeping

“The Power of Friendship Bracelets” by Natalie Katona, To All The Men I’ve Tolerated Before

“The Whimsy and Heartbreak of America’s Garage Sales” by Caity Weaver, The Atlantic