Dress A Day, Day 19: Graduation Ceremony

Monday, May 24

At the jam, in a quiet back room with a big sign on the door: Theater Department. Today is my anniversary: it was this Monday in May last year that I packed my things and moved into my new life. But more than an anniversary, a graduation! I am bigger now, I feel it today, more ready to play than ever.

The dress is from Berkeley, a second hand purchase from Telegraph Ave. bought in my freshman year when I was meticulous about wearing at least a little bit of orange every day. It's hand made and was once a lot longer, I imagine, but not in my time. The fabric is a horrible polyester which is fine for Berkeley where the days are mostly pleasant, but not for the sweat pit that is Tel Aviv. I wore it so much in college that I couldn't part with it when I moved to Israel, so it sat in storage for almost four years until my mother announced that it was her turn to move to Israel and I, recently arrived to New York, trekked to California to sort through the few boxes I left behind. While away, my Brooklyn apartment was broken into for the second time in the two short months I had lived there and maybe that's a different story except that it's part of what I've graduated from: that time in my life in which my private space was broken into and burglarized repeatedly. Amen.