pretty pretty princess

Today, I got to be a princess. I swear to G-O-D himself. On a random late-afternoon coffee run, I talked a friend into humoring me with a trip to The Costume Shop.

I was five stinkin' years old again. Iced coffee in hand, I made a beeline for the fat mascot heads. I looked Tigger right in his gaping hollow mouth and grinned toothily. I had to check a mirror to see if all my teeth were there in fear I had actually, physically regressed.

After that it was all down hill.

Even before i put anything I was knight questing for a single costume to try on. In fear of agitating a sweet dressing room attendant I chose a limit for myself ahead of time. I swept through rack after rack of other lives I could slip into and out of. Running my fingers across every sequin and bead that could have been mine in some parallel universe I lost myself to the imagining.

When I found myself again I was inspecting with surprising discretion an entire rack of romanticism. I found Shakespeare's Viola in a courageous, sturdy gown of tan and green. I found Juliet in a dazzling purple garb that sang out with loss and hope. Astounded and slightly abashed, I found myself in a sweet dress of delicate gold and white. With flowers on it. I kid you not. Fragile gold fleurs twirling shyly down the entire skirt.

If you know me you are laughing. Stop. I'm not kidding. This little tomboy will come put your lights out if you make fun of my dress. I'll never be able to explain how I looked into this dress and fell in love, when it is so utterly not me. And still.

When I slid it on, zipped it up, and adjusted my girls, I was shocked.

I lit up. I remembered hours spent in my backyard as a kid, with one of my mama's old bridesmaid dresses spread out around me. I felt our prickly grass against legs that had yet to be shaven for the first time. The far too advanced heft of a book in my bitten fingers, warbling Disney songs and waiting for my prince to scale the chain link fence. I shone. The black smudges squatting under my eyes were outshone by, (could it be?) a blush. Promise bloomed in my chest, and a sudden surplus of blood poured into my limbs lightening and stretching them.

Have you ever wrapped yourself in even the tiniest dream come true and watched it's perfect graceful drape from your shoulders and pool on carpet? It is effervescent. I blossomed in the light of it. Vulnerability suits me. Hope kick's purple's butt as the color that best lights my eyes.

I got back home just in time for some crappy news. I found waiting for me the tear stained trimmings of a life misattended. Just general pooptastic life stuff. You know.

I got a little overwhelmed, a little snuffly. Ok, I kind of cried like a baby. I walked into the bathroom for a tissue and watched my face closing up with exhausted frustration. I saw myself become ordinary again. I watched all that joy get zipped up behind someone else's betrayal. I got ugly, fast.

I was completely amazed at the careworn face in front of me. Where did the princess go? Joyful naivete gave way to a brow furrowed in amazement. Couldn't she live in this life?

The longer I looked in the mirror the more I began to wonder at the simple idiocy. I had chosen that dress because I saw in it the recovery of something so lost to me in my every day. These (oh so naughtily pilfered) pictures bore witness to the fact that the girl in the mirror and the girl in the dress were the same. Worse yet: same girl, same hair, same makeup, same day. Within hours of each other.

Fledgling bravery took root somewhere in the burrow that had formed between my eyebrows right about then. It flourished in an instant and even if it didn't magically transform me back into a princess, it brightened me.

My reverence must be preserved for that stolen fifteen minutes twirling in the dressing room mirror, curtsying to myself in the evening sun. The world musn't keep all it's princesses locked away in dreary towers of hardship, or even mediocrity. We must keep ourselves glowing with our fairy tale hopes. I should try harder to open myself, in spite of the world.

What? I should.


I should dress like this every day.

p.s. Thank you to the Costume Shop for indulging me when I stood in front of the mirror for far too long and talked to you about 90's cartoons. And thanks for not telling when you totally knew I was taking pictures with my phone every time you left the room.