Everyone said my 102-year-old grandmother was too frail to make it to my daughter Lily\u2019s first birthday.<\/p>\n
She came anyway.<\/p>\n
Before cake, Grandma pointed to an old wooden sewing box hanging from her wheelchair.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Lily,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n
Inside were three dresses.<\/p>\n
The first was mine from childhood.<\/p>\n
The second had belonged to my mother.<\/p>\n
The third was unfinished.<\/p>\n
Cream-colored, with tiny green leaves stitched along the hem and only one sleeve attached.<\/p>\n
Then I found a letter hidden inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the baby I hope I live long enough to meet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Years earlier, after a failed fertility treatment, I had told Grandma I was afraid I might never become a mother.<\/p>\n
She never promised everything would work out.<\/p>\n
Instead, she went home and started sewing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI made it because hope needs somewhere to sit while it waits,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
Her hands eventually became too weak to finish the final sleeve.<\/p>\n
So she left it for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinish something I started.\u201d<\/p>\n
For six weeks, I struggled with that dress.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I finished it.<\/p>\n
We dressed Lily in it and photographed her on the same front step where my mother and I had once been photographed in Grandma\u2019s dresses.<\/p>\n
Grandma died four months later.<\/p>\n
Today, those dresses aren\u2019t locked away.<\/p>\n
Lily wears them.<\/p>\n
Because Grandma taught me something I\u2019ll never forget:<\/p>\n
Love isn\u2019t meant to be preserved perfectly.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s meant to be lived in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone said my 102-year-old grandmother was too frail to make it to my daughter Lily\u2019s first birthday. She came anyway. Before cake, Grandma pointed to an old wooden sewing box hanging from her wheelchair. \u201cFor Lily,\u201d she whispered. Inside were three dresses. The first was mine from childhood. The second had belonged to my mother. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9410,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408\/revisions\/9410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}