08/07/2024
In all my travels, Rome is my first love and favorite city. It’s called the eternal city because of its many lives and enduring spirit through the inevitable highs and lows.
On that first trip, I didn’t know myself very well yet. And what little I did know, I was pretty insecure about. I bought a long cotton dress at a boutique on the way to visit the Vatican because I didn’t own a dress in 1997 that covered my knees, or anything else for that matter. But it was required to enter churches. So I bought a really pretty black and gold print cotton dress, cut on the bias, beautifully body hugging all the way to the floor.
There was a second trip to Rome with a boyfriend my parents hated. My confidence was at an all time low, perhaps explaing the choice of said boyfriend. By that time, the dress had become a favorite easy dress. I loved that dress. And I was beginning to learn to love myself.
In 2022, I returned to Rome to run my first marathon. I had gained a lot of confidence, put myself through design school, married my love and was only one year from becoming a mother. By that time, the Rome dress was worn thin but still worn. I still threw it on for early morning dog walks in Brooklyn and it even made it through the first few months of pregnancy. I don’t think I’ve ever owned a garment that I treasured more.
After 2 babies and a move to California, I realized that the dress had at some point disappeared from my wardrobe. So for my fourth trip to this Eternal City, I recreated my beloved in the same type of crinkle gauze cotton fabric, in an equally fun and colorful print. And I love the new Rome dress as much as the old.
It feels strangely victorious to return in this way. I know myself. And after my own many lives, highs and lows, practices in endurance, I love myself, the new and the old.
I wish the same to anyone out there who may have ever felt something similar.