My story is about my mother's beautiful ball gown. She had carefully wrapped it in tissue paper and placed it in a cardboard box and it was hidden away in a top cupboard. From time to time it would be lifted out of its box and shown to us, and as small girls we would imagine the day when we might be allowed to try it on. That never happened.
The top cupboard where the dress was stored happened to be in my bedroom. One day when I was around the age of nine or ten, I had an urge to try it on. I quickly pulled the gown over my head, easing it down over my girlish frame. My mother's waist must have been extremely tiny as it fitted my waist with little room to spare.
Suddenly, I realized that my mother would be home soon, so I hurriedly undressed but I accidentally spilt a bottle of ink over the bottom of the dress and the lining. I was shocked and scared. I stuffed it into the box and shoved it back onto the wardrobe shelf, never to be tampered with again, and never, never, never to be forgotten. I lived with the dread throughout my teenage years that it would eventually be discovered with traumatic consequences.
The years passed and my mother grew old and became ill.I made the decision that she would come to live in a nursing home near me. As she was leaving Christchurch probably forever, I decided to arrange an afternoon tea with a group of her closest friends. Mom and her friends recalled about their past days. Somehow the conversation turned to the dress and my mother said she never could understand how it got a terrible ink stain on it.
Suddenly, I found myself in front of my mother—red-faced, guilt and shame washing over me. I was sure my mother would have forgiven me, as mothers do, and at last I was released from that awful secret carried deep inside me from my childhood. It was never mentioned again.
