orchid

It’s just an orchid knit gown, fabric interwoven with gold lame thread.

Okay, it’s something special. Unique and Cinderella superb.

The dress was the prime item at a fundraiser for Breast Cancer Angels – and I looked like an angel in it, so of course I bought it, spending the inheritance before I knew it would be cut by one-third. The money benefitted a non-profit that I had good cause to support.

It was the right thing to do all around. As I twirled, the dress swirled, filling the room of celebrants with joy in the giving and the receiving. It’s just a dress that looks like an orchid, a prime candidate for a pageant. It’s color casts my skin tones as peachy – and that’s how it felt to be within the elegant gown, so I couldn’t be without.

Three-quarter length, so the toned calves and ankles show. It’s a dress that fits any figure, and so it’s been shared. It causes eyelashes to curl more elegantly in their mascara. It carries its own Miss America sash, a wrap-around for shoulders, where my freckles can a distraction. It’s a weighty dress, worthy of its splendor.

It is mine. But, of course, when I wore it to a main event – and then, a second (dress that expensive desires more wear then once) – the air sucked out of the room. Everyone was breathless, in love…but not the queen bee. She was in lust and envious drag.

The first queen bee wore a designer dress which hung to the floor. It was deep purple-blue, like her eyes, and artfully darted to showcase her abundant rack. But her eye make-up was smeared from crying because her dress was second: it had silver threads to my gold.

No wonder she envies: I was first place again, the first born, the unaffectedly perfect, self-contained, guileless giver, positive to the core. Qualities that win.

I’d be abashed, but I didn’t place these qualities or opportunities in my life. It’s God’s gifts that I praise.

It’s just a dress.

P.S. The memory was evoked by a Tupperware catalogue. Orchid is the new color of the season.

Tupperware shares well.