Hawaii: the dress my mom wore

It feels a bit strange to be writing about flowers when all I can see outside of my window is snow, the kind of snow that turns your ears pink and makes even the strongest person feel fragile. I am not complaining though because I spent 16 days in Maui, Hawaii and if I had stayed any longer I would have missed the Evergreen trees at Christmastime.

While I was packing my suitcase, I felt that I only needed three things: a hairbrush, my swim suit, and a very special dress my mom gave to me. The hairbrush was necessary to prevent my hair from growing upwards, a swimsuit because I was ocean bound, and the dress because my entire life was waiting for this moment to wear it.

The dress used to sit below our old home's staircase in a box that smelled like Christmas decorations. I can remember opening it just to have a peek when I was still too young to be careful. The flowers always stood out to me as flowers often do, as if each petal had the power to make time stop. It didn't look like something you could wear on the prairies, not even on the sunniest of days, so how did it arrive in a box underneath our staircase?

 When I was finally big enough to slip the dress on without it falling to the floor like a puddle, my mom gave it to me. It was then that I learned the dress came all the way from Hawaii. My mom found it in a shop called Hilo Hattie when she was just twenty one. It was her very first time traveling and she had never seen palm trees before. The dress was a way for her to not only blend into island life, but to take home as a memory of the flowers that grow there.

I rose my arms, pulled the dress over my head, and looked towards the palm trees and purple flowers. It was a similar view to the one my mom saw at twenty one, before she ever knew she would have a belly that could grow a daughter. Now that daughter wears her dress.

Wearing:

Dress •  Hilo Hattie || Flower Crown • Longs Grocery Store

Photos taken at Maui Sunset in Maui, Hawaii.

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