The after-Christmas blues always hit me pretty hard.  I think it quite appropriate that the 26th is referred to as Boxing Day by our neighbors to the north, because I feel like someone punched me in the stomach when I wake up on that morning.  All the buildup lies deflated in a heap of wrapping paper, empty boxes, and malfunctioning Keurig coffee makers on the floor.

Today at work I opened my Pandora station and was met with a final blow to the gut: the Christmas station I had created before Thanksgiving began to play.  Good thing I had a distraction: today is the day I bought my wedding dress.  (Or, technically, my dad bought it through me.)  I headed south and west to Rockefeller Center, littered with just as many people as last week.  Only now we were all bereft of any Christmas spirit–in its place was a rabid thirst for sale items.  I dodged, weaved, and (sorry, Lord and Mom) pushed my way through the crowd and the twenty-degree temperatures and found myself on the other side of the glass in Saks Fifth Avenue. Standing there among the rows of cosmetics and clothing, wrapped in my bubble coat, fake leather boots, threadbare hat, and scarf around my face, I didn’t feel like a person about to throw down the plastic that would buy her the most important dress of her life.  But there I was, maybe not dressed the part but damn sure playing it.  And I realized that I no longer worry about that disparity.  I’ve read the Bible and The Velveteen Rabbit and know from both that when you are real and loved, shabbiness doesn’t matter.

So I took the elevator to floor five and marched proudly into the bridal salon, where I made the prettiest dress you ever did see MINE.  It’s a beautiful shade of white, which my heart usually isn’t, but I’m going on someone else’s credit there too.