The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters

by Jeffrey Zaslow

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter One - The Mirror

  Chapter Two - Danielle

  Chapter Three - Sweethearts and Girlies

  Chapter Four - Meredith

  Chapter Five - Grandma Eva

  Chapter Six - Erika

  Chapter Seven - The Mother Daughter Business

  Chapter Eight - Megan

  Chapter Nine - Life Preservers

  Chapter Ten - A Becker’s Bride

  Chapter Eleven - Julie

  Chapter Twelve - A Daughter’s View of Marriage

  Chapter Thirteen - Ashley

  Chapter Fourteen - Danielle

  Chapter Fifteen - Erika

  Chapter Sixteen - When Shelley Stepped Away

  Chapter Seventeen - A Family’s Love Story

  Chapter Eighteen - Megan

  Chapter Nineteen - Meredith

  Chapter Twenty - A New Generation

  Chapter Twenty-one - Julie

  Chapter Twenty-two - Ashley

  Chapter Twenty-three - “I Do”

  Chapter Twenty-four - Outside the Doorway

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  GOTHAM BOOKS

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  Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First printing, January 2012

  Copyright © 2014 by Itzy

  Photograph credits: pages viii, xvii, xviii, 7, 14, 37, 45, 55, 183, 232, 282 copyright © Kelly Lynne Photography; pages 12, 146, 158, 258, 260 courtesy of Danielle K. Wenzel; page 27 courtesy of Meredith Kaufman; page 34 courtesy of Roxanne M. Maitner; pages 48, 172, 180, 274 courtesy of Lynn Hansen; pages 72, 216 courtesy of Laura Pardo; page 88 courtesy of Courtney Schlauel; pages 90, 97, 116, 121, 127 courtesy of Michelle (Shelley) Becker Mueller; pages 103, 106, 244, 250, 269 courtesy of Julie M. Wieber; pages 132, 140, 267 courtesy of Ashley Bradenberg; pages 195, 197, 200, 209 courtesy of Carol L. Otto; page 237 courtesy of Ben Friedkin; page 264 copyright © Kelli Wiseman, Clever Creations Photography; page 277 courtesy of Megan Martin

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  ISBN : 978-1-101-55363-3

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  For my daughters, Jordan, Alex, and Eden,

  and for your daughters too...

  Becker’s Bridal, a mainstay on Fowler’s Main Street since 1934.

  Introduction

  One hundred miles northwest of my home, in a tiny, rural town with one stoplight, I found a place where 100,000 daughters, along with their mothers and fathers, have found themselves reflecting on the word “love.”

  It’s a place where, every day, parents can’t help but be enveloped by a swell of emotion as they think back to the love they felt when their daughters were little girls. They think ahead, too, contemplating the love needed to carry their daughters onward from here. These parents know the disappointments and betrayals associated with the word “love,” especially these days. They know the losses that define life. Still, most make their pilgrimage here with a sense of hope and optimism.

  For the daughters, usually women in their twenties, this is a place that makes clear they are at a crossroads. They have so much on their minds—“love” being at the forefront, usually—but they also can be distracted, impulsive, naïve, and fearful. Each of them has a story that brought them here. Not all will find happiness after they leave.

  I never knew that all of this emotion was so well concentrated in one spot, a ninety-minute drive from my house in suburban Detroit. But once I started coming here, to watch and listen, I often found myself caught up in the swell of my own parental feelings, as the father of three daughters. For all of us who desperately wish that our girls will go through life safe, happy, and surrounded by love, time spent here offers visceral reminders of the challenges our girls face, of the ways in which sadness is so often intertwined with their joy, and of the sweet possibilities that await them—or that may be beyond their grasp.

  What is this place?

  Put simply, it is a room . . . in a building . . . in this very small town.

  The town is Fowler, Michigan, a middle-class community with 1,100 residents—and 2,500 wedding dresses.

  The building is Becker’s Bridal, the largest business in town, and home to all those dresses—a “blizzard of white” squeezed tightly on three floors of crowded racks.

  And the room? That’s up a short flight of stairs and over to the left, on the second level of Becker’s. Each wall of the ten-foot-by-eight-foot space has a floor-to-ceiling mirror designed to carry a bride’s image into infinity. They call it “The Magic Room,” and with good reason.

  From the outside, the store looks like an old bank. That’s because the two-story, heavy stone structure was built a century ago to house People’s Bank, until the bank went under during the Depression. What was once the bank’s vault—cleared out of the few stacks of money that remained—is now the Magic Room, a place with soft lighting and a tiled, circular pedestal. This is where brides are taken when they finally decide which of the 2,500 dresses could be “the one.”

  Becker’s sits at the south end of a tired-looking two-block Main Street. The family owned store, led in an unbroken chain of ownership by four generations of Becker women, has been a mainstay at this location since 1934. Over the years, the store has served more than 100,000 brides, many of whom traveled here from across the Midwest. It is a place rich in history, visited by young women who usually know none of it.

  Th
anks to Becker’s Bridal, the town of Fowler has more wedding dresses per capita than any other municipality in the United States, or perhaps in the world. But not many people outside of Michigan have heard of this place, or know anything about the women of Becker’s—a daughter, her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother—who built and nurtured the store, guiding all of those brides into all of their dresses for seventy-six years.

  As for the Magic Room, the saleswomen at Becker’s don’t use the word “magic” lightly when talking about it. They routinely watch brides and their mothers melt into tears in this room as they reflect on all the moments in their lives that led them here. After seeing their daughters on that pedestal, fathers are often overcome with emotion too. They excuse themselves, leaving the vault and then the store, so they can compose themselves. Fathers can be seen pacing up and down Main Street in Fowler, blowing their noses and wiping their eyes.

  We live in an age when TV reality shows—Say Yes to the Dress, Bridezillas—have drawn attention by showcasing the frenzied pursuit of the wedding dress. These programs are framed like sporting events, with brides bickering and dickering and racing toward a finish line marked by their selection of a dress.

  Some of this goes on at Becker’s, too, of course. But I came here not just to write about wedding gowns and what they represent. I also wanted to understand the women wearing them, their fears and yearnings.

  I resolved to pay less attention to brides I met whose motives seemed somewhat frivolous, the ones more focused on their dresses than their upcoming marriages. Instead, I wanted to find brides and their families whose paths here were not necessarily easy, but who have given great thought to the love that guides and connects them.

  I guess I wanted to stand in the Magic Room with these families whose stories touched me the most, and while there, contemplate my feelings for my own daughters.

  For a decade now, I have written a column for The Wall Street Journal about our most emotional life transitions. That’s my beat. Before this job, I spent fourteen years as an advice columnist. (In 1987, I won a competition to replace Ann Landers at the Chicago Sun-Times.) And so I long have been drawn to stories about love, especially the bonds between parents and daughters. My three daughters are now ages twenty-one, nineteen, and fifteen, and I know they will need love in their lives—from me, my wife, each other, and someday I hope, from their husbands and children.

  As my girls have grown up, I’ve always tried to pay attention to the detailed ways in which other parents express affection for their daughters—the ways they sought to reassure or encourage them. As a father, I was often guided by the readers of my columns, and the thousands of letters they sent my way. Their stories remain with me, and have helped me find my bearings in the Magic Room.

  There was the judge in Illinois who told me he grew up in a home where everyone always said “I love you.” Because of that, he found it easy to say those words to his own children. One Friday night in 1995, as his eighteen-year-old daughter headed out the door with her friends, he said to her, “Remember I love you.” She replied: “I love you too, Dad.” She died hours later in a car accident, and the judge told me how grateful he was that his last words to her were a reminder of his love.

  The judge’s wife wasn’t raised in a family where affection was articulated so effortlessly. And so the words didn’t come as easily to her. She was in the other room that day, and wasn’t fated to have a final loving exchange with her daughter. She told me she didn’t need to say “I love you”—her daughter knew she was loved—and yet a part of her ached because she wishes she had said it.

  Again and again, people have explained to me the ways in which “I love you” can be said to daughters without saying it.

  A woman once wrote to me to explain that when she was growing up, her mother never asked her to wash dishes. Even if she offered to help, her mother wouldn’t let her near the sink. “As long as I live,” her mother told her, “I want to do this. After I’m gone, many dishes will be left for you, and I hope it warms your heart to remember that I always did them for you.” Since her mother’s death, this woman often thinks of her, happily, when she washes dishes. “She was setting this up,” the woman told me. “She wasn’t always in good health, and she knew the time would come.”

  I’ve seen how people’s love for their daughters can be strengthened in times of adversity.

  I was moved by conversations I had with an eighty-one-year-old reader whose sixty-year-old daughter had Alzheimer’s. She spoke of changing her daughter’s diaper, just as she had sixty years earlier. “When I push her in her wheelchair, I think of how I pushed her in her baby buggy,” she said. This mother had always assumed that when she got old, her daughter would lovingly look after her. “But feeling sorry for yourself, that’s bad news,” she said. Her story taught me about accepting fate, pushing on, counting blessings. She spoke of telling her daughter “I love you,” and her daughter looking at her blankly, through cloudy eyes. That was OK. “I’m lucky to have my daughter in my life,” she said.

  Over the years, I’ve written about the ways in which love still can be expressed, even when our daughters leave us weary or disappointed. (One exasperated mother told me that she often ends her phone conversations with her argumentative college-age daughter the same way: “I love you, but I’m hanging up now.”) I’ve also seen how parental love can be burdened by regret, and how a mother’s or father’s worst behavior can do terrible damage. I’ve thought of these stories too as I’ve gotten to know the families who journeyed into the Magic Room.

  I once spent a day with female inmates at a maximum-security prison in Illinois. One woman was serving a life sentence for her role in the murder of her mother. But that day, she was focused on her nine-year-old daughter. As part of a prison literacy program, she was reading good-night books into a cassette player, after which the tape would be mailed to her child. The book project was created to remind children of incarcerated parents that “love can travel through prison walls.” This inmate read her daughters titles including Goodnight Moon and Guess How Much I Love You. “You want to be there when your child is sick or needs comforting,” she told me. That wasn’t possible, of course, but by reading good-night books, “I can give her the love in my voice.”

  I’ve remained haunted by the young adopted woman I once interviewed who had finally found her birth mother. During their tearful reunion, she asked about her birth father. She hoped to hear a love story: perhaps her parents had been too young to marry and made the hard choice to give her up for adoption. Turned out, that wasn’t the story. “Your father was a stranger with long blond hair,” her birth mother said. “He asked for directions, then raped me.” The young woman swallowed the news. “Now I know,” she said. She came to accept this startling revelation. The rape had given her life.

  Though I’ve written mostly about strangers, much of what I learn leads me to think about my own daughters. When my kids were younger, I once joined a hundred dads in a high-school auditorium near my home. It was a gorgeous Saturday morning, the sort of autumn day that called out for fathers and sons to toss footballs. But we were indoors, asking ourselves hard questions about our relationships with our daughters.

  How do I look at women? Do I comment on their weight or attractiveness? What message does my behavior send to my daughters?

  The session, part of a fathering conference, was a reminder that these are precarious times for parent/daughter relationships—especially girls’ bonds with their fathers. Reams of research show that girls who are close to their dads are less likely to be promiscuous, develop eating disorders, drop out of school, or commit suicide.

  Like the other fathers, I winced as the session leader told us that most of our daughters would be lifelong dieters, have a negative body image, and be emotionally scarred by bullies. A dad’s job, we were told, is to remind a daughter of her strengths, and to guide her into womanhood. We were encouraged to start by developing small rituals t
hat reinforced the message: “Dad loves you.” My youngest daughter, then eight years old, had recently broken her leg, and needed me to carry her up stairs. I decided to kiss her lightly on top of her head as I lifted her, and she’d been smiling luminously in response. When I began putting notes in her lunch bag, wishing her a good day at school and telling her I was thinking about her, she surprised me by saving every note in a box in her drawer.

  After I told that story in my column, I heard from daughters, young and old, offering their own recollections, and warnings, too. Some women described the damage that results when parents don’t show love. “My father never told me I was pretty,” one woman wrote. “He never said he loved me, so when the first knucklehead came along and said it, I jumped right in.” Another woman, now in her forties, told me that a part of her is still “an awkward twelve-year-old, wishing my dad would say, ‘I love you, too,’ when I said, ‘I love you, Daddy.’ But he didn’t and still doesn’t.”

  I’ve seen how tightly women hold on to their happiest recollections from childhood. One woman in her fifties told me about a memory of being eight years old. She had fallen asleep during a family car ride and woke up as her dad was carrying her into the house. In her grogginess, she had this wonderful feeling of being loved and secure. “My dad had me safely in his arms,” she told me, calling the moment “a treasured memory.”

  As I’ve collected these stories throughout my career, I’ve also seen how parents with daughters focus on the future. From the time our daughters are born, we can’t help but think about the men they might marry. We all have our laundry list of qualities for potential sons-in-law—that they respect our daughters and provide for them, that they will deeply love our daughters and the children they raise together.