The Birthday Dress

“See you when the germs have gone” shouted my daughter from the car window as we waved goodbye to her Grandparents. We were heading home after our last Sunday dinner before the first lockdown and at three years old she had little understanding of what it was actually going to entail. Really, almost all of us were naïve as to how long this was actually going to last.

The year that followed was a year of “no’s” and “not right now’s”, a year of “sorry, the park is still closed”, a year of “we’ll FaceTime Grandma instead”. Plus, with a new baby brother it was also a year of “sorry, he needs me more right at this minute”. Ellie was supposed to be spending this time with friends at nursery, wonderful days with her Grandparents and well-planned trips out as a family. Instead she was stuck at home, with me doing the baby/pre-schooler juggle (and not all that well!) with nowhere for us to go.

Really, Ellie handled the situation amazingly. Far better than I did. She took everything in her stride, understood what we could and couldn’t do and rarely complained about those we couldn’t. Yes, there may have been a bit more screen-time than I would have liked in non-pandemic life but surely that’s the same for most of us? We also made a lot of memories at home and spent some of the best moments doing one of Ellie’s favourite things: cutting things up. We mixed potions in the garden by cutting up weeds and dead flowers, turned milk bottles into patchwork elephants by cutting up paper, collaged a rainbow for the window to say thank you to the key workers and made marbled playdough by cutting it into tiny pieces and squidging it all back together. I am now the proud owner of a very large box of very small pieces of paper, card, foam, ribbon and anything else she could get her scissors on and I still don’t know what to do with it.

For Ellie, this year wasn’t just any old year that could be lost into haziness with no landmark memories to fill the time. This was the year that Ellie started school. Another milestone in a challenging period that she embraced whole-heartedly. Despite only having Zoom calls to meet new teachers and make new friends, having to leave me (waving madly) at the school gate to make her own lonely walk to her classroom and it all being topped off with a long stretch of home-learning, she has absolutely rocked this beginning. We are so very proud of her.

For me personally, it was also a year of “no’s” and “not right now’s”. With so much time at home but almost every minute of it consumed with childcare and survival I stared longingly at my sewing machine for many months. Its only journey onto the dining table one afternoon was to make a handful of masks for the family, now such a noticeable sign of these times. In recent months, with the situation gradually improving and slightly more time for myself, I have found so much joy in returning to my machine at last. I knew exactly what I wanted one of the first things I made to be – a birthday dress for my beautiful girl’s Fifth(!) birthday.

I wanted this dress to be special, to show her just how much I have appreciated everything she has done in such an uncertain time. I let Ellie choose the navy floral fabric from my ever-growing and unable-to-be-used stash. I chose the dress pattern myself which meant that, in secret, I could add a puffball of cerise pink tulle – a colour that I’ll admit I begrudgingly use while trying to parent with at least a small amount gender neutrality but which I know is her favourite. After all, this is a dress for Ellie and not for me!

Working in secret, cutting and sewing in the evenings has brought me back to a place of calm. I’ve realised how much of myself had been missing by not giving myself some time to create. I remembered that this was a lesson I had already learned during my maternity leave following her own birth and yet I had to re-learn it all over again after such a manic time.

Stepping back from the neatly pressed dress - bow tied, buttons fastened, hanging up ready for the birthday girl - I am so happy with the result. Thankfully, Ellie is too! Twirling around on the morning of her birthday with a beaming smile and desperate to wear it everywhere she can. I hope she understands one day, at least a little bit, what this dress represents for both of us.

Thank you Ellie, you truly are a superstar!