It wasn't the sort of dress I'd expected to find in the charity shop. I'd gone in there looking for a sensible denim skirt - the sort of thing that wouldn't look tired and secondhand even if it was a bit worn. I don't spend much on clothes, these days.
Anyway, there I was, sliding the hangers along the crowded racks and trying to ignore the faint, fusty odour of the woollens on the rail above, and suddenly I was at the end of the skirts and into the dresses - and there it was. Yellow like sunshine, as bold as a buttercup and as comforting as custard...a long, rustling yellow-golden sheath of silk.
For a moment I just fed my sunshine-starved eyes on its beauty. It shone among the dull greys and browns and blues of the handed-down autumns and winters; It shouted of summer, and its rich honey-sweetness reminded me of the careless days of cider and harvest fields, moments of laughter imprisoned in amber, nights illuminated by a drowsy golden moon which hung like a richly carved locket in the velvet skies.
I fought with my practical side for an endless, agonizing moment. It was sure to be the wrong size (but it wasn't). It was bound to be ridiculously expensive (it was an absolute bargain due to a tiny mark). I would never have an excuse to wear it...
I thought of my daughter, fourteen going on twenty, and a self-proclaimed fashion expert.
'You always wear brown,' she'd moaned the other day. 'You always wear the same boring things.'
Well, I thought - surely I would be far more exciting if I wandered around the house dressed as a sunbeam. I caught myself smiling. Then I found myself reaching for my purse, sliding the dress from its tatty hanger and clutching it to me as though afraid some stranger might snatch it from me.
I knew my daughter would ridicule it. I knew I would never wear it in front of my diffident husband, or my sympathetic friends. To all of them, it would be a contradiction of the person I was. To me, though, it would be the vindication of the person I might have been. In the privacy of the house, when the others were out, I would slide through the tedium of my days like molten gold, and my hidden dreams would glitter like an Anglo-Saxon hoard.
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.