Before Nonna married and started a family, she was a working girl, with a marketable skill, making her way in the world as a seamstress for an upscale dressmaker on Via Mazzini in downtown Verona.
-An Ocean, an Airplane, and Two
Countries Full of Kisses (Ch. 8 Keeping House)
There is magic in childhood.
On the top shelf of my closet is a non-descript storage bin
which magically transforms into a time capsule. When I open the lid, just like
Alice I disappear down a rabbit hole and land in the fantastical: a crystal cavern of golden memories
and bejeweled mementos. The treasures from my childhood are all there. Journals of every shape and
size, a red jewelry box from South Korea, scrapbooks pieced together with
yellow tape, ragged paperback copies (Little Women, Where
the Red Fern Grows), my postcard collection ...
and one Barbie doll ballgown.
More than any other item, that Barbie dress transports me, not to one particular moment but to a series of moments of my Nonna sitting at her sewing table, the black machine whirring, her feet paddling, and the needle going up and down so fast that it is a blur.
The sewing table was a never-ending surprise of delights for a little girl, the two tiny drawers filled with buttons, wooden darning eggs, pincushions, basting chalk. Then, as I watched breathlessly, Nonna would take something like a simple piece of pink satin, then some lace, and like a fairy godmother create an intricate ballgown complete with a pearled ribbon at the waist.
It was a princess dress, a Cinderella dress, a Sleeping Beauty dress. Perfect for fueling imagination and inspiring adventure.
1 comment:
Oh my - that dress is absolutely beautiful!!
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