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27 years ago today I was married, sort of. I wore this dress, bought at the White House/Black Market on my lunch hour. The marriage ended 7 years later and my choice to do that changed forever my sense of who I was.
I say "sort of" because we had married secretly on Dec. 30. My husband was so shy he could not imagine a "real" wedding, but said if it were all for show, he could get through it. A Unitarian minister was fine with the ruse.
My hair would have been brunette then and very, very short. But the earrings are the same and I think I wore this locket, which had belonged to my grandmother and has a photograph of her father.
We married in my parents& #39; apartment, then I threw a big party that night. My father paid for a tent that covered my modest backyard, I splurged on the food and never regretted that was my major cost.
I considered myself a profoundly loyal person, yet I bailed. Years later, I worked out my thoughts about that in an essay called "My Life as a Villainess," which will be published for the first time this year in a book by the same name.
Why do I still have the dress? I keep thinking I& #39;ll dye it. This is the third time I& #39;ve worn it; a few years ago, my daughter and I dressed up as "princesses" for a musical performance at the local library. I paired it with a velvet jack from my great-grandmother.
I was recently given the interesting assignment of thinking how I& #39;d like to be described in my eulogy. The first word that comes to mind is "loyalty." But am I? I wonder.
