The clothes-shrinking fairy

Ever since I was a little girl, one of my favorite times of the year has always been the week leading up to Easter.

There are yeast rolls to make, eggs to dye and decorate, and, of course, a pretty spring dress to pick out and wear to Easter morning services.

I had planned on shopping for a new dress for the special day but never got around to it. So, Saturday night, I pulled out all of the spring and summer clothes I had packed away last fall. I was pleased to see plenty of choices in Easter colors from a pale pink and a spring green to a soft cream.

I eagerly stepped into the first one, then the second and the third. Egad! I looked like a pastel-colored stuffed sausage … and not in an appetizing with-cheese-crackers-and-wine kind of way. I don’t know when it happened, but somehow the clothes fairy had snuck into my apartment and sprinkled her shrinking dust over all of my dresses!

Okay, so that’s what I wish had happened.

What actually happened was equally fantastic: Despite having eaten only four or five normal meals in the last 11 weeks, I had actually managed to outgrow all of last year’s clothes. I guess that’s why they call it the miracle of motherhood.

After a brief moment of mourning, I pulled out the two dresses that I was sure would still fit around my middle. One was a vivid red; the other, a bright cobalt blue. I settled for blue, the lesser of the two non-Easter-colored evils. Although the empire style fit comfortably around my waist, my burgeoning, er, upper region made it difficult to zip midway up the back.

I enlisted my husband’s help. First, we tried the no-breathing technique. After a few attempts, I was clearly deprived of oxygen but clearly not clothed. Next, we tried having me hold the back closed while he zipped. This didn’t help me get the dress on, but it did prove I had very limber shoulders. Finally, Tom told me to lie on the bed.
“Oh, gosh,” I thought. “It’s come to this?”

I was like the desperate lady in the television commercials who can’t get her jeans on by jumping up and down and finally resorts to lying on the bed to zip them and then eating cereal for two weeks straight. The only difference was that I was lying face down, someone else was doing the zipping, and every time I eat cereal I throw up (darn dairy!)—all of which I’m pretty sure make the whole scenario worse.

Fortunately, the third try was the charm, and I was officially zipped. Unfortunately, church was still 12 hours away. Of course, that just meant I had plenty of time to add “maternity clothes shopping” to my weekly to-do list.