Lessons from a Broken Zipper
Picture this scene with me
It’s 4.00pm and my only Princess is getting ready for her big night – Prom night (which apparently is short for ‘Promenage’ night. Thank you last born son for your wikipedia skills *laughing*). I am the proud mama and make-up artist for the evening and after doing her face she goes to get her lovely dress. Puts it on and turns her back to me to help zip it up. Now this dress is very fitted and so pulling up the zip has to be done with some amount of ‘force’. I applied that force and half way up her back, it gets stuck! And it remained stuck for the better half of an hour and then the world as we know it goes up in smoke! The zipper broke!
Tell me, how does a mother react in this kind of situation? My heart skipped many beats as I looked at my daughter’s face waiting for her Jeremiah’s anointing to kick in. It did not. Thank God! And for some strange reason which I now know could have only been divine peace, I did not panic either. She had another dress – not as nice, a tad too short for me – that she could ‘manage’. She cleaned the quiet tears that had broken through her bravura and put on the dress. I touched up her make-up and assured her that she still looked nice. As she put on her shoes I decided to call the tailor/designer we had asked to change the zip (because the original one had already shown signs of stress so we had proactively asked for a ‘sturdier’ one to be sewn in) to let him know what had happened. As you can imagine I just managed to bridle my tongue but said tailor/designer knew I was not amused.
As I spoke to him, my mgm who had been napping waiting for us to get ready overheard my conversation sat up like a jack in the box! What!? The dress of his only princess had a broken zipper! How can? And before you could say ‘Thread the needle’ my mgm had grabbed the dress, piled only Princess and I into the car and off we were! Where to? To find a tailor that could fix the zip but we soon realised that the traffic outside our estate would not be an ally so he announced that if we could find needle and thread, HE could sew his daughter into her dress! As God would have it my sistapillar, LanreKosoko and her lovely daughter had these items (which yours truly did not have!), we collected them and zoomed back to the house and people of God, I kid you not. This man, my one and only mgm took his time to neatly sew his daughter into her dress! I stood back dazed because I have NEVER seen him sew in my life! He secured his child into her lovely dress and he did such a good job that we had to cut the child out of the dress when she got back! And that my dear people, is how the day was saved! The next morning I woke still thanking God for the day. You know me, I always try to learn stuff from everyday life and God always opens my eyes and heart to do so. Permit me to share what I learned this time:
Practical lessons
1. Always, ALWAYS have needle and thread in your house! And for these kinds of events, please always have a possible Back-up Dress!
Relationship lesson
1. Hold your tongue even when everything in you wants to give someone a piece of your mind! All day my mgm had been ‘grumpy’. Does she need make-up? Do we really need to have someone special come fix her hair? Bless him but I was just managing to keep my mouth shut at all his ‘negativism’. I mean, how could he not get that THIS was a big deal for our daughter? But thank God I bridled my tongue. Can you imagine if I had got into a spat with him over it, how much worse the day would have gone PLUS at the end of it all, HE saved the day! I was so proud of him!
Parenting lesson
1. At some point my daughter asked me through thinly veiled tears why her Papa was being ‘negative’. I told her honestly that I did not know but I did know that it was not against her personally. I bit down on my usual urge to roll my eyes and say ‘You know your daddy now….’ in that way only wives can say. And look at how in the end, it was her Papa that saved her day? I know she totally forgot any ‘off’ feelings she might have had earlier because were it only me in the house, she would have had to wear the other not-so-nice-but-we-shall-manage-it-dress!
God lesson
1. God knows the end from the beginning. He knew that I could not sew to save my life. He knew that one day in my future as a mom I would need to sew up my daughter into her prom dress and so he made sure to give me a husband that grew up with a grandmother that made him sew many, many, many hems as a young boy! Yes, God, the Master of the Game of my life, arranged it so my daughter would have a dad who could sew! Is he not just the best ‘ArrangeeFada’ ever? Is it not amazing the lessons you can pick up from a broken zipper? Forgive the long post but I hope you pick a thing or two from it that you can use in your own life! Shalom!
Bola Essien-Nelson (aka Salt) is a blogger/author based in Lagos, Nigeria. You can connect with her via her blog – The Salt Chronicles on Blogger where she is ‘seasoning’ the world around her one salt blog at a time.
