Can't have nice things

“Oh, wow, I love your lipstick. That color looks great on you!”

“Thank you,” Anessa said to the saleswoman with a quiet smile, gripping my leg.

“You have quite the fashionista on your hands.”

“You have no idea. She had tooth fairy money and all she wanted to spend it on was make-up.” This was now the third time I had delivered a similar line, and we were only in our second store.

It was Saturday afternoon, I needed to make a return at the mall and Anessa had been begging to “go to a shop”. I wasn’t sure how this adventure would play out: it could be a delightful afternoon or a tantrum-laden nightmare. Anessa was getting better at managing disappointment as evidenced by our last few uneventful grocery store trips. So, I decided to take a chance.

Our first stop was Sephora where, after I showed her how to test the colors by putting a little on the back of her hand, she confidently chose the brightest red matte lipstick they had. The saleswoman had tried to push her toward a gloss, but Anessa wasn’t having it.

“I want to do more shopping!” Anessa declared skipping out of the store after we had paid and stopped to apply the new lipstick.

In Anthropologie she chose a couple shirts off the sale rack to try on alongside me in the dressing room. Given the tighter, cropped trends some of them almost fit her. Almost. She made me pause trying on the clothes I had selected so that she could do a proper fashion walk complete with facial expressions and puckered lips.

She was incredibly disappointed when I told her I would not be buying any clothes for her in this store and even more so when I explained that she had actually spent ALL her money (and some of mine) on the new lipstick.

“ALL of it? But I want to keep shopping!” She was still wearing a too big, purple, ruched crop top and making faces at herself in the mirror.

“How about we go to a store that has clothes that will fit you. You could use some new shorts.”

“Yeah!!! I don’t even like this shirt anyway.”

And off we went. 

Anessa was having a hard time deciding what she wanted to try on until she came across short overalls.

“Mommy! These are just like yours! We can be matching!”

After a quick stop for iced tea and a pink lemonade as well as a few more conversations with women taken by Anessa’s bold lip look, we were headed back to our car with our shopping bags in hand. Anessa insisted on carrying her own.

Some of my favorite memories with my mother were made while shopping. Whether it was back-to-school clothes as a child or our day-after-Christmas shopping tradition that continues, I always look forward to that time together.

Now I was getting to share this experience with my own daughter.

My heart was bursting as I buckled Anessa into the carseat and placed her lemonade in her cupholder. She was chattering away about how she couldn’t wait to put on her new clothes as soon as we got home and show them to Daddy. She was so excited, so happy.

And then with the click of my own seatbelt, my heart went from bursting to broken. This moment of unexpected joy should have been everything. But we grievers can’t have nice things.

I had dreamed of a moment like this since I was a child pretending to be a mommy. The make-up and shopping and matching clothes. The attention from other shoppers or salespeople over how adorable my child is.

It was a dream that I had desperately buried in the far recesses of my mind. I had taken Jackson shopping but he was quickly bored. The handful of times I’d been shopping with Adelaide, I was confronted with stares and pity. Certainly no one tried talking to her and I could always feel the clock ticking toward her next medication dose, tube feed, or seizure.

I had just lived out a dream come true but instead of euphoria I felt loss. Grief had been tapping at my shoulder all afternoon but I’d denied her. I wanted to enjoy the simplicity of the moment, or, rather, grant it the simplicity it deserved. Grief complicates everything and for once I just wanted to be happy without conditions or context.

And I had been, until my seat belt clicked and I returned to my reality where grief coats everything like a sticky film.

While Anessa sang along to the radio, I swallowed the consecutive lumps that collected in my throat.

“Mommy, my pink drink is so yummy and sweet!” She smiled at me in the rearview mirror, her lips red and her eyes sparkling.

“That was so much fun, right?” I smiled back.

“Yeah, let’s do it again tomorrow!”