the ghost of wedding present

The sight of Tilly standing in front of the full length mirror in my bedroom wearing my wedding dress brought my own childhood memories flooding back. I remembered putting on my own mother’s bridal gown as a child, swirling around lost in taffeta and lace and netting and a child's dreams of bridesmaids and bells and of a handsome man who would sweep her off her feet. I remembered my mother telling me that her mother had also married in that very dress and when she had children she had promised her young daughter that she too would walk up the aisle in her old dress. ‘But I thought Granny was buried in her wedding dress mummy’, I had said, puzzled. ‘She was dear’, my mother had explained. ‘She just got a bit forgetful in her old age and forgot she'd promised it to me first. It all worked out for the best in the end', she smiled. 'Although I did have to switch dry cleaners after I was married’, she added. I imagined the same childish dreams in my own daughter’s head as she stumbled about innocently in the too large dress.

‘Mummy’ asked Tilly, seeing my reflection enter the room behind her. ‘Yes dear’ I smiled. ‘Why is your wedding dress all white?’ she asked. ‘Because white stands for purity and a fresh new start’, I explained. ‘Mummy’, continued Tilly, ‘what’s this veil for?’ ‘I smiled. ‘That’s so that on my wedding day no other men were allowed to see me except your daddy at the alter’. Tilly thought for a moment. ‘Mummy?’ she began, looking down the front of the dress. ‘Yes dear?’ ‘What’s this big icky stain?’ I was just thinking a little about that one when a laugh came from the doorway. ‘Another few minutes and that could have been your older brother Tilly!’ said Hilly, my eldest daughter. Well, I thought to myself quietly, half brother actually, but thought I’d better just award that point in the seemingly perpetual mother versus adolescent daughter battle to myself privately for the moment .'Who are you going to marry Tilly?’ Hilly asked. ‘I’m going to marry Daddy!’ said Tilly triumphantly. ‘And I’m going to be a princess!’ she announced. ‘You can’t marry Daddy, silly’ Hilly told Tilly, ‘Much as Mummy might tell you that it’s allowed in the country’, she said, ‘and anyway’, she continued, ‘you should never marry a man who looks better in a dress than you do, and anyway, the princess can’t marry the que...’

‘Hilly!!’ I snapped, very annoyed by now, 'I’m trying to do a poignant mother-daughter bonding scene for my blog here, so if you don’t mind…’ Hilly laughed. ‘Bloody hell’ she said, ‘Do people know how much you stage stuff just to get something to write on your stupid blog?’ I was rather annoyed at this suggestion, I must say. It did seem most awfully unfair. ‘Look Hilly, darling,’ I said, exasperated, ‘You said you didn’t want to be in the blog so just bugger orf and go up to your attic and read Harry Potter or something’. ‘Well!’ exclaimed Hilly, 'that has to be more realistic than your blog!’ ‘Oh, just go away will you Hilly, and be sure not to wake the baby!' Hilly’s jaw dropped. ‘You've had another baby?!’ she said. ‘Oh gawd, Hilly, how could you not know such a thing?’ I asked. ‘I don't read your f***g blog’, she said, ‘So how am I supposed to know what goes on in this family?’ she asked. I think she must have meant that more as a rhetorical question because she stormed off at that point and slammed the door. Down the hallway the baby started crying. I grabbed the wedding veil from Tilly and pulled it down over my face. If I couldn’t see anybody then they couldn’t see me either, I thought, so then somebody else would have to change him. Hidden behind my veil, I began to think that perhaps, after all, today was not a nice day for a white wedding, but tomorrow seemed like a nice day to start again...