4-year-old Ella in a very special vintage Esprit dress

What could be a more awesome birthday gift for your 64th. birthday than to see your granddaughter wearing a dress you bought when you were pregnant with your son in 1985? For Pretty whose birthday was yesterday, nothing could have made her happier than to see the dress she had carefully preserved for nearly forty years finally being worn by a child she loved with all her being.

In the 1970s technologies made it possible to determine the sex of a fetus before the baby was born; however, these measures were not popular until the 1990s which meant that in 1985 in Columbia, South Carolina when Pretty was pregnant during the very hot summer months and shopping for fashionable clothes for her baby to be, she had no idea that instead of a dainty little baby girl who would treasure a fashionable Esprit dress when she was four years old, she would have a 10 lb. 8 oz. baby boy who probably could have worn that dress on the day he was born.

Occasionally during the past twenty-three years we’ve been together Pretty would take the dress out of the box, remind me of its history, then carefully fold to put it back. That dress represented so much to her and to know Pretty is to understand she finds it nearly impossible to let anything go, but several weeks ago she told me she thought it would fit our older granddaughter perfectly so maybe the dress needed a new home.

When Ella’s dad saw her in the dress yesterday and learned its history, he was astonished and said it fit her perfectly, like it had been bought for her – and of course it had. Hopefully one day it will fit perfectly for Molly.

Happy Birthday to Pretty a/k/a Mom a/k/a Nana a/k/a Neena who recognized the love from her family as the most important gift of all time. You are our treasure.

Published by Sheila Morris

Sheila Morris is a personal historian, essayist with humorist tendencies, lesbian activist, truth seeker and speaker in the tradition of other female Texas storytellers including her paternal grandmother. In December, 2017, the University of South Carolina Press published her collection of first-person accounts of a few of the people primarily responsible for the development of LGBTQ+ organizations in South Carolina. Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home will resonate with everyone interested in LGBTQ+ history in the South during the tumultuous times from the AIDS pandemic to marriage equality. She has published five nonfiction books including two memoirs, an essay compilation and two collections of her favorite blogs from I'll Call It Like I See It. Her first book, Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing received a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Her writings have been included in various anthologies including Out Loud: the best of Rainbow Radio, Saints and Sinners New Fiction from the 2017 Festival, Mothers and Other Creatures; Cowboys, Cops, Killers, and Ghosts (Texas Folklore Society LXIX). She is a displaced Texan living in South Carolina with her wife Teresa Williams and their dogs Spike, Charly and Carl. She is also Naynay to her two granddaughters Ella and Molly James who light up her life for real. Born in rural Grimes County, Texas in 1946 her Texas roots still run wide and deep.

3 replies on “Ella surprises Pretty on her birthday”

Comments are closed.