The Journey of the Little Flowered Dress

By Cheryl Paley


t was just a piece of flowered fabric really – simple, no ruffles, no beads, no high end designer label. I bought it at a street fair back in the days when my “skinny jeans” were just jeans. A 6? Maybe a 4? It cost me $7 and I wore it constantly. In summer and fall, with leggings or bare legged, layered, over a bathing suit, you name it. My little flowered dress made me feel like dancing. Years went by and every spring I would take it out, put it in a pile to give away, and then back it would go, to the back of the closet where I could keep it safe. Just in case I lost those extra 10 pounds. I just couldn’t let it go.

My theatre company was doing a clothing swap – we all brought in our castoffs – that sweater that used to be great with jeans except for the hole under the right arm, the vintage jacket too tight to squeeze into. We all brought our “stuff,” put it in a huge pile and picked through the treasures together. It was time, I told myself, to let go of my little flowered dress. So, into the pile it went. Anything unclaimed would go into the miscellaneous bags and be given away to different charity organizations.

As the pile got smaller and smaller I couldn’t help but flinch seeing it picked at, poked, thrown around and discarded. The designer labeled items went quickly, followed by anything denim. And still, my little flowered dress remained unclaimed. Abandoned. A castoff in a sea of castoffs.

One of my assistants, a gentle soul named Owen saw me grab my little dress from the bottom of a pile being thrown into the “miscellaneous” garbage bag. “Is this yours?” he asked, “It’s so cute. Maybe my girlfriend will want it?” I felt like the kid who is last to be picked for the soccer team and finally gets called. “I hope she enjoys it, “I said, “as much as I did.” A year later Owen found another job and left behind a small pile of items forgotten – castoffs. Including, you guessed it, my little flowered dress.

Time passed. I put together a theatre piece based on Rory Kennedy’s documentary, “Pandemic: Facing AIDS.” In it, she profiles stories of those infected and affected all over the world. Stories of struggle, stories of courage, stories of those abandoned by their society, forced to leave their homes, orphaned. Castoffs.

The film features a story about a remarkable AIDS orphanage in Uganda, where the children have a choir. I wanted my actors to somehow know them a little better and thought, maybe if we sing their song, we will. It was a simple melody with a haunting message: Don’t forget us. Don’t cast us away. Through the miracle of the Internet I was able to contact their caretaker, Margaret Boogere. A year of emails followed. We wrote letters back and forth, my actors and myself and Margaret and the orphans. We became friends. And in our theatre piece we sang their song.

Spring came again and, instead of sending our castoffs from our clothing swap in miscellaneous satchels to anonymous sites, we decided instead to send gifts to the orphans. I asked everyone to bring in things they could no longer wear, things in good shape, things children might be able to use. Things they cared about. We collected 5 enormous boxes of clothing, pens, candy, shoes and toys, and in it was my little flowered dress. It was finally time to let it go.
6 weeks went by with no word. We were sure our care packages had been vandalized, rifled through. And then, just as we had almost given up, there it was: an email announcing the safe arrival of our gifts, and pictures of the celebration they had to honor the good fortune of our friendship and generosity. There, on a little girl with the face of an angel, was my little flowered dress.
How strange it is that, in the midst of so much abundance, I can sometimes feel so discarded, forgotten, cast off. With a closet full of clothes, a roof over my head and a loving family I can feel so alone. Stranger still that the simplest of gestures, the giving of a $7 dress could fill me with such an abundance of joy. When I’m down I click on that picture of the smiling angel, the one right there at the top of your computer screen. And, for that moment, I feel like dancing.

Cheryl Paley