Six years ago, I walked into the local Goodwill store in the quaint town of Manistee, Michigan. I wasn’t there for too long just perusing the isles not necessarily to buy anything however in the back of the store, in a messy pile of what most would’ve considered trash, I spotted a piece of gold when I saw the perfectly good and never been used vintage dress form with even the original price tag on it!

I looked around thinking I’d been Punked! I didn’t hesitate to pick it up and briskly walk to the front of the store to pay for my gem. I asked the cashier what the real price was as the tag was from the 70’s so I knew it’d be more seeing that it was some 45 years later… but NO she didn’t know what to charge so she said “well it says 15$ so let’s just call it that” again I looked around pulled out a 20$ bill and told her to keep the change and dragged it out to my car then down the hill to my house on Ramsdell where I kept it in my sewing room and actually used it to make a few ugly pieces of clothes (I am no seamstress but in the dead of winter in northern Michigan, it kept my mind busy.

Fast forward, now I live in Florida and my vintage dress form is used as a part of my decor with mini lights and occasionally my one hat rack. When my children and I went to be with my mom & dad this Christmas, I noticed by their front door a old familiar decoration…. YES, my mother has the EXACT SAME dress form, exactly dressed with mini lights and my Dads hat greeting all of their friends.

My mom said “Debbie, it’s been there for years “. We laughed about how I never noticed it before but when they came in May to visit me, my mom told me she had the exact same piece.

For the last several years I’ve been saying, “I know I was adopted at 5 months old, but I am more and more like my mother with every passing day”.

It doesn’t matter where one comes from or their circumstances of the past, what matters is what you do in the next chapter of life, what matters is that you make a difference with the things you know now that you didn’t know yesterday. Now that my son has returned back to Minnesota, my oldest daughter back to Michigan and my baby girl back to school, I am alone with my wonderful memories, and every year I couldn’t shed while caring for mom and helping my Dad are flowing again down my cheeks this time with a lump in my throat as I hang her precious painting’s strategically around my house here in FL I can’t help but wishing she was here to tell me the best place to hang them. But when I remembered the dress form, I remembered that she is always with me as she always has been because she instilled within me everything that I would need to carry on…

So if you’re reading this story and missing your precious loved one, please understand the physical body may no longer be with you, but they live on in your memories and in your hearts forever just remember and keep remembering….