I gasped as I caught sight of the handwriting on the cover. It was my mother’s familiar scrawl.
“What’s this?” I asked, confused.
“Your mother made this for the convent when she was here,” the sister explained. “It’s part of our archives. I’m afraid we need to keep it, but I thought you’d like to see it before you go.”
My hand trembling, I took the book from the sister. This was just like my mother. She loved to make scrapbooks. She’d made one for my and Dean’s engagement, one for our wedding, another when Roman was born. Of course she’d made one for her convent days. Scrapbooks were my mother’s way of commemorating life—her means of satisfying the frustrated journalist within.
Opening the book, I saw that she’d scrawled a dedication to Oldenburg. Within the pages, she’d written out passages of favorite poems to accompany the black-and-white snapshots of her fellow novices and the Oldenburg grounds. There were pictures of religious statues, photos of beloved flowers.
I managed to keep my emotions in check as I looked through the book. But then I spied an image of her in that white dress.
I caught my breath. She looked so young and pretty and thin. And so very sad. I gently touched my index finger to the page, my lip quivering.
“Are you all right?” the sister asked, leaning over the table.
“My mother always loved white dresses,” I said, beginning to cry. I looked to my mother’s face—to that white dress—to steady me, then held Piper tighter, using the back of her dress as a makeshift handkerchief. “That never changed.”
“That’s quite typical in the church,” the sister replied dismissively.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “There was nothing typical about my mother. For her, white meant—”
I paused, looking for the right words.
“—so many possibilities.”
Acknowledgments
It takes a village to write a book. Such was the case for White Dresses, a collection of essays I never intended to become a book. But Patty Dann thought otherwise. Patty is not only a consummate teacher and gifted writer, but she is also a wonderful person and friend. I was fortunate to take Patty’s Life Stories class in Manhattan’s Westside YMCA, where my children attend preschool. At the time, I thought it would be fun to take a writing class while my kids were in session. Little did I know that an in-class essay I would write about my mother would strike a chord with my classmates, who saw something in my words that I didn’t. They encouraged me to write more. And I did. My thanks go out to Patty for guiding me so patiently and to all of my Life Stories classmates—particularly Lisa and Irene—for their feedback, support, and candor throughout the writing process. My thanks go out, too, to the Westside YMCA for maintaining such a wonderful writing program and a gifted arsenal of instructors.
I am eternally grateful to Jin Auh and Andrew Wylie of the Wylie Agency for guiding me through the publication process. Thank you for your patience, advice, and insights at every turn. You are my heroes, literary and otherwise.
My hat goes off to Lisa Sharkey at HarperCollins. For as long as I have known Lisa, she has impressed me with her passion, her drive, and her golden gut. Lisa has always had a knack for spotting a great story, for recognizing a diamond in the rough. I am honored and thankful, Lisa, that you took the time to read my story and took a chance on White Dresses.
Thank you to Amy Bendell for being such a wonderful editor. From the very beginning, you “got” White Dresses and understood my mother and her many losses. Thank you for helping me to take that first version to the next level and beyond. Thank you, too, to Dani Valladares for your attention to detail in the editing process and helping to make later versions of the chapters sing. And thank you to Mumtaz Mustafa for crafting a beautiful book cover.
I would additionally like to thank the rest of the White Dresses “dream team” at HarperCollins: Zea Moscone, Heidi Richter, Trina Hunn, Alieza Schvimer, Molly Birckhead, and Jennifer Hart. You all are not only extremely talented professionals, but also lovely people.
My mother loved her siblings. And I do, too. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me by phone this past year, to help me better understand portions of my mother’s life and your shared childhood. My mother always described you as a brilliant bunch—and she was right. I would like to especially thank Uncle Al, who provided so much support to my mother physically and emotionally the last few years of her life and gave her a sense of belonging and acceptance she so desperately needed. You were the first to get back into the house after all of those years. And instead of judging my mother harshly for what you found, as my mother had feared, you loved and accepted her as a sister and a human being even more. I can never thank you enough. I would also like to thank my mother’s first cousin Bob Furge for all of his time and family insights.
I would like to thank the teachers in my life who took the time to encourage me over the years. So many of you helped me more than you know by offering kind smiles and warm hugs when I was at my most vulnerable. Special thanks go out to Edie Pondillo for calling me a writer and imploring me to chase my dreams, even if they were different from everyone else’s, and to Jerry Anderson, who never stopped believing in me, even when I threatened to stop believing in myself. And a special salute goes out to Trenton Elementary School, for being the most magical shrine of learning an aspiring writer and budding journalist could ever want. You are gone but not forgotten, and the copious amounts of (very real) fairy dust your rolling country hills provided me and so many others will live on forever.
Finally, I must thank the love of my life: my husband, Dean. I once asked my mother how I would know when I had found the right man to marry. She told me there would be two telltale signs: an inability to stop thinking about him and the knowledge that being around him made me a kinder person. As always, she was right. I am such a lucky woman to be married to my best friend and biggest cheerleader. Dean supported White Dresses, and my complicated family, from the very beginning. He read through numerous drafts, dried lots of tears, and, most importantly, made me laugh along the way. To Dean: thank you for being a wonderful son-in-law to my mother, an amazing and giving father to our four wonderful children, and my knight in shining armor in every sense of the term. I love you WAMHAS.
About the Author
MARY PFLUM PETERSON is a veteran multiple Emmy Award–winning producer at Good Morning America. She was also a producer and reporter for CNN, where, from her post in Istanbul, she divided her time between covering Vienna balls and navigating warzones. Mary lives in Manhattan with her husband and their four children.
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Credits
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Copyright
WHITE DRESSES. Copyright © 2015 by Mary Pflum Peterson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-238697-7
EPub Edition AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780062386984
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