the dress

prompt: It states on my calendar that today is Grandparents’ Day.
Therefore, the prompt for today is to write a poem or story about grandparents.
word count: 607

***

“Mom told me I needed see you, Grandma,” the young woman said moving towards her grandparent.

“Oh yes, Kya. Just over here, there is something I want to show you.” She grabbed the younger woman’s hand and walked her over to the dress she had earlier removed from its place in her old trunk.

She gasped. “Grandma, is… is this?”

“I wore this fifty years ago when I married your grandfather. I nearly ripped it before the ceremony in a panic. It was so hot. Your mother wore it when she married your father, of course her wedding was in the winter...”

“Grandma, this is beautiful,” she said, delicately running her fingers over the ivory silk.

“It was made just for me to wear for the wedding. I had never worn anything so fine. I haven’t since either. I hated it at the time, but now it brings back some of my favorite memories.”

The two were silent for a few seconds, appreciating the exquisite details of the garment.

“I wanted to tell you that if you decided you would like to wear it for your wedding, I would be more than happy to -”

Her granddaughter wrapped her arms around her.

“Yes, thank you, thank you, Grandma. Mom will be so happy!”

She winked, “Would you like to tell her now?”

The response was a squeal and a quick dart out the door.

Alone, she ran her fingers over the soft ivory gown, the silk cool and smooth on her weathered hands, rough and calloused from years of fighting and work. She looked between the two surfaces, her skin and the silk, wrinkled to smooth, scarred and speckled to spotless. She sighed, memories flooding back to her.

“I will never forget when I first saw you walk down the aisle wearing that,” a voice said from the doorway, “I had battled armies, faced assassins, dueled my father, and in that moment I was more intimidated than I had ever been in my life.”

She laughed quietly. “You almost saw my back as I ran back down the aisle, too.”

He took her hand in his and kissed the back of it. “I had never seen anything so beautiful - “

“That was a long time ago,” she broke in.

“Until the next day,” he continued, “when I woke up with you in my arms, and then the day after that when you insisted on cooking dinner, and the day after that when we stayed up all night drinking whiskey and talking about the future, and then the following day, and then every day after that. The day you told me we were to be parents. The days you gave birth to our sons and our daughter. The days you kissed me just because you felt like it. The days you screamed at me just because you felt like it. The days we danced. The days we fought. The days our children married. The day you held our first grandchild and then our second and third to the sixth and the seventh. The day I found you crying because somehow, after all we have done, all our mistakes, everything we have been through, we made this wonderful life. Every day more beautiful with each new experience together.”

She smiled then, and wrapped her arms around around his middle and laid her head against his chest, a position comfortable and instinctive from years of practice.

“A young man and woman, pulled together fighting a war that was not theirs, living, dying by the blade of a sword. Now look at us. Old and slow and…”

“Happy,” he finished.

“Happy,” she repeated, “We are happy, aren’t we?”