Sentimental Dress

I'm cleaning out my closets, sorting and giving tons of clothing away to the "truck" that comes around our neighborhood every month or so to pick up donations. We almost always have at least one bag of items to give away. Recycling.

I come across this dress in my closet every time I make one of these "give away" sweeps. This one has been put in and taken out of the "to donate" bag dozens of times over the last 20 years. I can never bear to part with this dress even though it hasn't been worn once since we moved to Seattle in 1991! What's going on here?

For one thing, this is a red dress (a print but still, it's red).

More importantly, this is a dress I purchased back in 1985 when I was pregnant for Chris. I went all out on maternity clothes for some reason; spent way too much money and bought from higher end stores like "A Pea in the Pod". I had all sorts of classy looking maternity suits and dresses that I wore to work. I remember Denny remarking that I never bought such nice looking clothing as when I was pregnant. After Laura was born and we'd decided that two children would the family make, I donated all my maternity wear, except for this one dress.

The claim to fame of this frock is that it's "sneaky" maternity wear. Designed to be worn as a non-maternity dress with a cinch-in belt at the waist, it balloons into a roomy, comfortable dress sans the belt as the pregnancy progresses. I wore it many times in December 1985, 7 months pregnant with Chris, and felt festive and seasonal. I wore it again two years later when pregnant with Laura. Just to get my money's worth (this one was really pricey), I wore it several times (with the belt) over the next few years, always around the Christmas holidays.

I read once that if you can't bear to part with sentimental things, one way to ease the endless struggle is to take a picture of whatever it happens to be and keep the photograph as the visual reminder of the item in question. I'm going to give this a try because this dress has to go. Bye Bye.