Around ten years ago, the size of our family increased. Our younger daughter started bringing her best friend home with her, which was a bigger deal than you might expect given our remote location at the time. We lived on an army post twenty-five miles away from where the girls went to high school, so bringing a friend home usually meant she was staying at least overnight, more likely for a whole weekend. Once she was with us for several weeks. By that point we knew she was one of us. It wasn't until a year or two later, right after we moved to New Mexico, that she became an official part of the family, forever. She came to live with us, and while she was still a minor, we were her legal guardians. From then on, as far as I was concerned, I had three daughters, not two. She moved out once she was in college, and we have been separated by many miles ever since, but I still refer to her as my "foster daughter," and she still sometimes uses the technically inaccurate but affectionate title of "stepmom" for me. We have stayed in touch, even though we usually go weeks between conversations. It's become easier in the last year, when she moved out to Colorado to be near the rest of us.
Saturday I got several hours of quality mommy-daughter time with my younger biological daughter, and today it was time for foster mommy-foster daughter interaction. I really can't remember the last time we got to have this much one-on-one conversation. Surely it's only been months, not years, right? However long it was, even if it was just a month or two, it was overdue. She is engaged to be married later this year, and she has asked me to help her with the dress. And by help, we mean construction thereof. In my younger days, I would have immediately started sketching and creating my own designs, custom tailored to her specific shape and desires. These days I am more stingy with my spoons, and I suggested we use a purchased pattern as our jumping off point. So we met at the fabric store down in Boulder, and said yes to the dress (patterns). I was trying not to influence her too much, since this is all about her idea of how she will look, not mine, but I think that the design I found and showed to her might actually be the winner. We talked about how to customize it with the fabrics she already bought, and she seems to like it. I suggested that she keep the pattern (we bought it) near her where she can see it every day this week. If she still likes it by next weekend, we will be in the dress making business. Thankfully, when she was still living with me, in high school she took a clothing construction class, so she will be the perfect seamstress' apprentice for this project.
I'm very fortunate that my biological family and my volunteer family is so good, and so solid. I've collected people over the years whom I will never release. They are my kids, my sisters and brothers, my aunties and uncles, no matter what the law or biology tells me. It flatters me that in this spirit, I have been entrusted to handle honorary mother of the bride duties, as is appropriate and as I am able with my limitations. When we brought this young woman into our home, way back in the California days, we didn't fully understand at first that it was for always. But we know that now.
I did not take any pictures of the dress pattern. I'm not sure that I will before the wedding, because the fiance wants it to be a surprise, and I don't want to spoil that for him. Or perhaps I'll take photos of the process, and save them in an album to show after the big reveal. Until then, I'll stick with coy little cat faces, or dangerous sleeping lizard poses, or whatever other random things I can use to distract from my secret project.
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