I’m not sure where heaven begins. How high up it actually is… but when I saw the mannequins on the fifth floor of this New York walk up in the fashion district, I thought perhaps, for my mother, it starts right here. 

You could say she loved clothes, but that’s not the complete story. She loved fashion. What’s the difference? I would equate it to the comparison of house and home. Fashion is about the design. The putting together. Accessorizing. For her it was not about what she was wearing, but how she wore it. 

Certainly no one mistook it for the promised land —  the Woolworth’s on Broadway in Alexandria, Minnesota — but when I watched her thumbing through the Butterick patterns, or the McCall’s, on Saturday mornings, when I watched the dream come alive as she swooped her hands from waist to knees, stretched her arms out in the make believe dress, for me I was certain I was in the presence of an angel. 

It had always been her dream to be a dress designer. I imagine her now, so easily she bypasses the stairs and floats her way to the upper floor. How joyfully she passes on her heart and knowledge to the young people amid the mannequins awaiting. How she drapes and flows. So elegant. So possible. And they can feel it. Beyond their pin pricked fingers and weary eyes, they are Woolworthed into her sense of magic. And it’s Saturday morning, every day. And they dare to dream because of her. Just like me.