The Perfect Ruffle-Bottom Pants
Two days later, my shoulders are still sore from my search for the perfect ruffle-bottom pants. Brandon and I were picking out our fanciest outfits to wear to our friend Ruth's wedding. We knew it would be a swanky affair. As we tried on different clothes and perfected our look, we realized that we didn't have a fancy dress for baby Hazel to wear to the wedding. Oh, sure, she had cotton sundresses, but those simply wouldn't do. We needed something better, and it was already the night before the wedding.
The obvious solution was for me to stay up until three o'clock in the morning crafting a dress out of scraps of black lace and hot pink chiffon. Baby couture is always a very serious affair, so I spared none of my skill in crafting the prettiest little dress I knew how to make. When I finally collapsed into bed I was giddy with my accomplishment. Little did I know that I was forgetting something.
I put the dress on baby Hazel in the morning to fit the straps. That was when I realized what I had forgotten: the diaper cover. Every little baby dress comes with a color-coordinating diaper cover. My hand-made creation had none. I had a plain white cotton one, but it didn't MATCH. The dress was pink and black. Clearly I needed to buy a new diaper cover. A black one. With ruffles.
With this vision before me, I took my oldest girl to her grandma's house and set out, baby in tow, to find the perfect ruffle-bottom pants. I just knew I would find them at Avant Garden, a crafty shop in downtown Ottawa, IL, where I had glimpsed numerous frilly baby items for sale. Since I only planned to visit one shop, I parked nearby and hefted Hazel's bulky infant car seat onto my hip. It would be easier to shop if I didn't have to hold a baby in my arms.
I strode into Avant Garden with my characteristic optimism. I just knew that they would have exactly what I wanted. Except they didn't. The sales lady gave me a tour of the baby merchandise, and there were zero ruffle-bottom pants of any color. I was surprised and disappointed. However, the helpful lady offered me a ray of hope. One of their biggest baby item vendors had a booth at the downtown flea market. They might have more options there.
Determined to find the perfect baby pants, I lugged Hazel and her car seat out of the store and onto the sidewalk. I peered down LaSalle Street. It was only two or three city blocks to the flea market. I could carry her that far. I set out to find the vendor.
Arriving at the flea market with my heavier-by-the-moment burden, I began looking for the vendor's booth. I saw hair bows and cutting boards, painted signs and upcycled furniture. As I traipsed through the grassy aisles, a slight hint of despair began to steal over me. The booth was nowhere to be found. I took an extra turn around the stalls. It wasn't there. Hot and beginning to sweat, I readjusted the bulky car seat, thankful that at least the baby was sleeping. Defeated by the fruitless flea market search, I trudged back up the sidewalk the way I had come. I popped into a dance shop and a custom tee shirt shop on the way, praying for a random stroke of luck that would leave the perfect pants waiting for me in an unexpected place. Suddenly, I was struck with a new hope. Perhaps the booth was at the other part of the flea market by the movie theater. It had to be. What was one more block to walk in search of the perfect baby pants? I ignored the cramping in my shoulders and hiked the car seat further up on my hip. It was my last chance.
As I poked my head into booths of jewelry, lawn ornaments, doll clothes, and gutter covers, my spirit sank. No baby clothes. All of my searching, all of my sweating and walking, the pain in my shoulders; the exhaustion was for nothing. Tired and annoyed, I retreated into my oven of a car and drove home.
In a last ditch hope for a miracle, I dug through a box of too-big baby clothes in my basement. There were no black ruffle-bottom baby pants, but I did find a pair of huge black tights with silver hearts on them. Those could work...if I sewed them. I could sew them!
Triumphantly I wound a bobbin of black thread and threaded my sewing machine. I cut the feet off of those huge tights and wrestled the stretchy knit through my machine to close up the ends. At long last, I put them on my baby. Finished.
It was a rush trying to get everything else ready for the wedding. My punctual husband had been giving me time warnings for hours, but there just wasn't enough time left to do everything. We ended up leaving the house late, and Brandon was frustrated and tense. We had to drive all the way to Chicago, and we were running late, all because I had wasted the entire morning on my empty quest for the perfect baby pants.
Late turned into later when we hit a traffic jam on I55. There was no way we would make it to the wedding on time. We drove as quickly as we could into the city and parked about a block from the massive Catholic church where Ruth and Danny were getting married. As we tiptoed, half an hour late, into the sanctuary, I prayed that no one would turn around and glare at me. My heels on the polished granite floor sounded like tiny gunshots.
No one noticed as we slid into a back pew and heaved sighs of relief. As Ave Maria filled the room, I marveled at the beauty and holiness of a space dedicated to housing God in lavish splendor. Stained glass windows, intricate carvings, statues, the grandest of grand pianos, and elaborate paintings gave the room a splendid majesty. At the front our friends were standing in their wedding attire. The priest recited solemn phrases, and the guests responded, participating in the ceremony with songs, liturgy, communion, and the gift and receipt of God's peace. We had missed the marriage vows, but we made it in time to be a part of the joyous rituals that unite friends and family with God and each other.
Ruth and Danny were married. As Brandon and I spent the evening eating, drinking, talking, and laughing with friends, do you know what no one noticed? Hazel's tights. They absolutely didn't matter. What had seemed like such a big deal to me that morning was completely forgotten, and I was the only one who had noticed or cared about it in the first place. I had let myself become so preoccupied with one little detail that I sacrificed my own peace and happiness on the altar of perfectionism. As I held my beautiful baby in her time consuming, elaborate outfit, I knew that all of the ruffle-bottom pants in the world couldn't make her any more perfect than she already was. She fell asleep in the midst of the dancing and din, completely content. And so was I.
