The excited voice of my seventeen-year-old daughter, Celia, bounced through the telephone wires. Closing my eyes for a moment, I could see her expressive eyes dancing to the rhythm of her voice.

"The Christmas dance is in two weeks. It's like a major thing here, and I can't wait! I want my dress to be really special--a dress that's different from everyone else's. I know what I want, and I want you to make it for me. Do you think you could?"

"Sweetheart! I'll be in the middle of production then--the combination December/January issue. The laundry room is such a disaster area that I probably wouldn't be able to even locate my sewing machine. Why don't we just buy a dress this time? "I'll even to take you to Atlanta to look for one."

After a moment of silence, Celia responded. "Mother, please. I want you to make it. I never can find dresses in stores like you make. Please" Having praised the crow for her singing, Celia rested her case and waited for the cheese to drop.

"I'm sorry, darling. But, I just can't do it this time," I was about to say when I began remembering the envy I felt, at her age and younger, when my girlfriends wore dresses made for just for them by their mothers for special occasions. My mother didn't sew, but she always took me wherever I wanted to go and allowed me to purchase the dress I most desired. Yet, I wanted what I couldn't have: creations designed and made, just for me, with love by my mom. At the age of twelve, I taught myself to sew, and I began designing and creating my own clothes.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I was designing and making most of my clothes, in addition to sewing for others in my spare time. I drove the small sewing machine, brought to me by Santa when I was eleven-years-old, like a race car. My little green hot rod would eventually be used to produce dozens of outfits for my children, window treatments for our home and my husband's law office, gifts, an array of household items. Yet, my passion for sewing waned. New interests and pursuits emerged in my life, and I didn't like sewing anymore. Whenever I sew now, it's a real expression of love.

"Okay, Celia. I'll make it. But, it's going to have to be something really simple this time. I mean a quick 'n easy throw-together--nothing more. I just don't have the time or energy for anything complicated."

"I promise! Thanks, Mother. We can go to the fabric store the day after Thanksgiving, and you can make it before I go back to school that Sunday. I can't wait to see you! Love ya..."

As soon as I hung up the phone, the right and left sides of my brain began yelling accusatory, guilt-provoking stuff to each other. Said Left Brain to Right Brain, "Where's that gray stuff between your ears gone now? It's totally illogical to take on another project, especially during this time of year. Why can't you just say no--no, no, no, no, no! Haven't you learned, by now, that you can't keep burning at both ends and survive?"

Right Brain responds to Left Brain, "You may be intellectual and rational, Bozo Brain, but you're cold, judgmental, and void of feelings and compassion. Leave me alone! God didn't give me abilities He wants shelved."

"Then why are you shelving your God-given allotment of common sense?" Left Brain snapped.

Swelling into a towering gray mass, Right Brain lunged forward and...

As soon as Celia and I returned home from the fabric store, I went to work. I had the dress cut out, marked, and ready-to-assemble within an hour. I only had a couple of days before I'd be taking Celia back to boarding school in Rome, Georgia, but the dress should only take a few hours to make. Yet, as I'd soon discover, the battle between my Left Brain and Right Brain was unresolved--and that would present a major problem.

Once I visually located my sewing machine and completed the obstacle course required to reach it, I began stitching. After completing the first long seam, I removed the fabric from the machine and realized that the under-stitching was an incredible tangle of  loop-de-loos. The seam was coming apart.

After awhile, my vision blurred, and loop-de-loos were all I could see. Late that night, I was still stitching seams, pulling out tangled mazes of thread, starting over. What was I to do? Well, I decided, I'd just keep at it until the dress was finished. I'd promised my daughter she'd have that dress for her school's Christmas dance. Come General William Sherman or Sadam Hussein, she'd have that dress--and she'd have it on time.

It wasn't until the following Tuesday, two days after Celia returned to Darlington, that I finally completed her quick 'n easy dress. The gown was a sad, tattered, and torn sight on the inside, but on the outside, it was glamorous. Before wrapping the dress in crisp tissue, I wrote a message to Celia, in gold ink, in the heart area of the taffeta lining: "How much do I love thee? Let me count the stitches..."

I dropped a surprise package of accessories into the folds of the gown, and I secured the box for mailing.

I picked up a rag doll, sitting on the window seat next to me, and hugged her. The doll, Suzanne, was made by me for Celia when she was three-years-old. Suzanne's eyes are green--like Celia's eyes, like my eyes. Suzanne's hair is brown--like Celia's hair, like my hair. Suzanne's outfit matches Celia's personality--sunflower yellow. Suzanne was one of Celia's roomies for over thirteen years, until Celia went away to boarding school.

Suddenly, I recalled inscribing another note to Celia. After embroidering a smile upon Suzanne's dimpled face, I remembered wearing a smile as I painted a miniature red heart upon the doll's upper left torso. Inside the tiny heart, I penned, "I love you, Celia."

Lifting Suzanne's gingham dress, for the first time since I'd dressed her over a decade ago, I was taken aback by what I saw. It looked as though her heart had been bleeding, too. My message was no longer visible. Only a faded, smeared red blob remained--a poignant reminder of what had once been a perfectly formed heart filled with a mother's message of love.

"Oh, Suzanne! You miss her, too, don't you?" I whispered, hugging the doll tighter. "I didn't know that dolls could miss little girls as much as little girls miss their dolls--as much as mothers miss their little girls."

"But, Mother," Suzanne whispered back in Celia's voice, "I'm not a little girl anymore. I'll always love you, but I'll need you in different ways as I move into the next stages of my life. I'm no longer a helpless, dependent little girl. You provided me with solid flying lessons for almost seventeen years. I want to test my wings now. Please don't hold me back or impose your will upon me, and I'll return to you many times."

Looking up, through misty eyes, I spotted another doll sitting across Celia's room in a rocking chair. She'd sat there for almost eleven years. Her name is Katy, and she'd once belonged to a little girl named Betsy, a child who'll never again be seen by her mother in this life. Betsy and her father died in a tragic car crash eleven years ago this month, a few weeks before Betsy would've started first grade. I also loved Betsy, and I was devastated by her death.

"At least my daughter is still alive," I thought. "Blossoming and flourishing. She's a mother's delight."

Yes, "losing" my daughter, two years ahead of schedule, was a difficult transition for me. However, going to boarding school appeared to be the right choice for Celia, and that's what mattered most.

Looking at Celia's rag doll again, I whispered my response to her. "I know, Suzanne. I know. I'm proud of the young woman Celia has become, and I won't stifle her or clip her wings. My almost-adult daughter is also my friend. I'll always be available for her whenever she does need me. There's a vast difference between being pals and being real friends, you know. Real friends are perceptive, receptive, and available when needed most. Right, Suzanne?"

Suzanne just continued smiling. But, I believe her eyes were misty, too.

Before long, spring arrived. Our courtyard garden was exploding with multi-colored flowers and chirping sparrows; new green buds covered rejuvenated shrubbery. As I was lounging, one April morn, upon a window seat in our breakfast room, sipping a cup of coffee and looking down into my resurrected garden, I received a phone call.

"Mother, prom is in two weeks, and I can't find a dress anywhere. Do you think you could make me one? Please? I know just what I want, and it's really simple. I promise!."

Two days later, I received a clipping from a teen magazine featuring three different prom dresses. The page was punctuated with instructive marginalia: "I want this neckline, this bodice, this hemline, these sleeves..."

On the day before Mother's Day, I packed my mini-van with my sewing machine, a partially assembled prom dress, ironing paraphernalia, and the shotgun my husband insisted on me carrying when traveling alone. When I arrived in Rome, Celia greeted me with an orchid corsage to wear to church the next day. When I showed her the almost-completed-dress,  her eyes squealed with delighted approval.

"I can't believe it! It's exactly what I wanted. Even the color is perfect."

I was still sewing, in our motel room, when Celia went to bed around midnight. Shortly after she climbed into her bed, I looked over at my big "little" girl. I walked over and sat on the bed next to my daughter, the child a physician once told me I'd probably be unable to conceive.

"Celia," I said, in a broken voice, "there was so much I wanted to teach you, but there was just never enough time for it all. I thought I'd have another two years before sending you out into this crazy world. Now you're gone, and it's too late."

Celia sat up and put her arms around me, "Mother," she said softly, in her usual gentle manner, "you taught me all the things that really matter. Not only did you encourage and help me with what I want to be my life's work, but you taught me the important lessons of life. Because of  you, I've been able to provide hope and encouragement to others."

The next morning, sitting in church waiting for The Mother's Day service to begin, I whispered prayers of thanksgiving for the blessing of such a special child. And I pondered things which will be kept tucked away in the folds of my heart forever.
 
 

to enroll at Brevard Colleg