Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

If the Dress Fits…

I may be a bit tangled in the layers of Cinderella’s ball gown, but I think every bride-to-be wants to feel as though finding her wedding dress is like sliding on the glass slipper. A perfect fit in every way. Destined. Meant to be.

For those of you new to the Archives, I am getting married this November (surprise proposal story here). This love affair with the Bohemian has been rather unconventional, our decision to wed, untraditional. So it makes sense that our wedding would be a bit outside the gift-wrapped box, as well.

A simple celebration, full of love, with a small group of close friends and family is our vision. But it seems even the most modest of affairs can quickly turn complicated. Or at least involve some planning.

Being that it’s often hard to find time just to file my fingernails, wedding prep’s been taking a back burner. Most recently, we’ve opted to take a pause on the nuptial project, get through the summer and resume most planning in August (which the calendar says begins today).

But one wisping constant in the wedding realm has not subsided. It’s floated, veil-like, around me, coaxing with fairytale promises, cajoling the ultimate quest. Yes, it’s the search of every bride-to-be. Looking for The Dress.

It started in March when we found ourselves, ever-so-briefly, in Los Angeles. My best girlfriend and I left the Bohemian in downtown Santa Monica, while she and I hit the freeways. We wanted to cover our bases. We shopped specialized bridal boutiques where I tried on poofy layers of tulle, satin ruffles and beaded bodices. Cinderella’s fairy godmother shopped there!

We went to a funky warehouse of second-hand vintage clothes, where there was no fitting room, just a chair and a mirror, where I slipped into a Gunne Sax dress from the seventies. We shopped Nordstroms’s evening gowns and sampled Betsy Johnson couture. We drove into to a Spanish-speaking district packed tight with retail shops. Hidden beside the storefront window where Quincenera gowns sparkled in fuchsia fluff, and cheesy pop music pumped stale love songs into the street, was the discount bridal spot. Its no-nonsense shop-keeper zipped me in and out of about 15 bridal dresses, remaining unphased when I didn’t warm to a single one of them.

As the sun set, we reunited with the Bohemian who had in his possession, one single, simple bag. Within in it, a sharp pair of neatly folded, cream-colored, Armani pants and a stylish white shirt.

“Where’s your dress?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. As if he thought that one could just go shopping in a single day and instantly return with The Dress.

Did he not understand that there was a search afoot? Things of this import, well, they took time…and effort.

But the Bohemian is a simple man who often defies convention. So he modeled his easy finds for us, and we agreed – he had done well. And done it in a single day. Handsome as ever, in his wedding clothes. His search was over.

Mine had just begun. But it made me wonder. Was this all in my mind? Was my quest for the perfect dress only has complicated as I made it?

In the proceeding four months, woven between dinner dishes, laundry loads and Jeb’s summer vacation schedule shuffles, there’s been my persistent attempts at bridal online shopping.

The Bohemian, he shakes his head with a smile, “Another one?” as multiple boxes arrive.

I’ve done Saks Fifth Avenue, J. Crew, Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus. One by one, ever-hopeful, I have unwrapped tissued packages and zipped myself into their contents. Almost always too big, or simply unflattering, every dress has gone right back on the hanger, as I’m left to read the small print of return instructions, adhere appropriate labels and ship back.

Though I hadn’t given up, I took a break. I knew the clock was ticking (more Cinderella-esque pressure of time) but I needed a pause. Until one day I was feeling rather casual. Almost no expectation. And I simply navigated to a website and noticed that there was this one dress. Maybe. On sale for half off. Only one left and it was in a size 2. Most likely too small (previous dresses had been an 8, a 6 and a 4 – hadn’t tried a 2!) I added it to my virtual cart and clicked to purchase.

And then I left my house. Went on retreat to a remote locale and was reminded – yet again – of how little one really needs. In the midst of our sparse campsite, I reflected on the three tubes of toothpaste in the bathroom back at home and shuddered at the clutter. I did a virtual gutting of our household cupboards. Vowed to simplify our lives even more as soon as I got home.

Later that afternoon, a setting sun with the Bohemian. We sat together surrounded by a mountain panoramic. We were misted by rain in golden light, an arc of rainbow close enough we saw it touch the earth. I fell in love all over again. Knew ever-sure, this was the man I wanted to be with the rest of my life.

The fairy tales, they detail the quest for destiny. You know, kissing all the frogs until the prince is found. Or how Cinderella’s evil step sisters try wedging their swollen feet into the glass slipper, to no avail.

It’s not right, until it’s right. And when it’s meant to be, it is. Or something like that.

And that size 2 dress was waiting for me at the door when I got home. And when I put it on, it fit. It’s simple, beautiful. And yes, I love it.

That quest, I am so pleased to say, complete.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 3 Comments

Retreat

Sometimes Grace sweeps in unexpectedly. Sends an invitation via express mail and there’s no time to even RSVP. You just have to ready for the event and head toward the occasion. That’s how it was this week.

A special remote location had been calling me for weeks. Or perhaps, I’d been calling to it. Longing for the essence of what I feel every time I am immersed in its folds. Body calm, mind clear, heart open. Steeped in its natural surroundings, I am home to myself when I am there. Humbled in the presence of the natural world, bowing to the energy that sources all things.

No phone, no computer, not even paper or pen to scratch down ideas and concepts. Just sun and stars, gathering wood, carrying water and the sound of birdsong in a stilled forest of guavas.

I got to share these sacred spaces with three very important men in my life (okay, Jeb’s still a boy, but a man-in-training, to be sure). There was my eight-year old son, Jeb, his father, Rex, (expert guide and the man I didn’t marry), and the Bohemian (specialist in traveling light and the man I soon will wed). We all orbited each other in a flowing dance of riverside wanderings and fireside chats, punctuating our days with sunrise and sunset.

Like any sacred journey or vision quest, there is an arc of experience in getting to this distant locale. There is the preparation, readying of myself to go. There is the first step in a long walk to get there.  And there is the passage, itself, in which time anything I do not need to carry simply falls away with every bead of sweat, each exhale.

Once I arrive, I am there to live and breathe all that this place has to offer me. Each visit different, as I am different every time I’m there. Insights filter through sunlight on the ginger flowers. Lessons are learned through a mist passing over the bluff. There is a remembering in the warmth of a big, flat boulder in the river and I can lay my body down and soak in everything I already know.

That’s right, I’m home.

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved

And then…it’s time to go.

When it’s time to part from this place, no shower is hot enough, no bed cozy enough to tempt me into leaving. I want to feel this way forever. How can I keep it with me?

I want to take everything I sense inside each cell within my body and put it in a bottle. Carry that bottle inside my heart. Uncork its contents to seep through every pore so I can breathe the fragrance of Love no matter where I am.

Store it for use when I’m standing in line at the grocery store, when suddenly the scent of wild lilikoi blossoms, yellow ginger flowers and the loam of wet, mossy stones would leak from my smile. The impatient shoppers in line, the electronic beep of the bar code scanner, would all take on the soft hue of perfection – I would still be home. And hopefully, my serenity would spread. A gorgeous contagion that would ignite the hearts of everyone in the frozen food aisle.

Or something like that.

But in this arc-of-a-journey, there is always an end. One last look back at my divine place, then the walking away. For the first mile of my departure, I am so happy, it feels as though every blade of grass that brushes me is blessing me in love. Two miles away and I begin to feel the changes. I am ever-closer to cars, street signs and the smell of laundry detergent on fellow hikers moving towards me.

I pick a lilikoi flower along the path and sniff it every time I sense my bliss fading like particles of dust behind me. Don’t forget, don’t forget.

But by the time I set foot off the trail and into the parking lot packed with rental cars and swarming with visitors in bright colors with cell phones, I know I am sliding down the slope of the that arc. I am on the other side.

What’s left are wisps of feeling. So deep, yet fleeting, and I opt for few words, as silence seems the only place where this sweetness will still linger. If I articulate, the essence scatters.

36 hours later and I am left with memories and a few photos. These words, here, that attempt to describe something I do not really understand. But I don’t want to understand magic. I just want to live it.

Remember that I’ve got (we’ve all got) a crystalline bottle of sacred light inside our hearts just ready to uncork. There is a longing that I have to seep the beauty of what I know is real and true into every action I take in this wild, messy world. How I want to smell the fragrance of Grace through all my days, no matter my locale. Beam it out. Share it. Remember that there’s an open invitation. Never have to part.

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

This Morning’s Observations

seeing the neighbor’s cat eating its prey, I’m fine if it’s a rat, upset if it’s a bird

in the time it took me to get my camera, I lost the moment of sunrise light criss-crossing the bedroom wall

what was once a lovely afternoon of decorating has now become a house full of dead flowers in vases

no matter how hard you try to reign them in, Lego pieces stray from the pile and end up underfoot

the reason I keep losing to the Bohemian in chess is because I just don’t see all the possibilities

looking at it is one thing, but start drawing the Flower of Life, and it’s a whole different world