Why I Wore One Dress For Nine Days in October 2008

when i went to help my dad through his first round of chemo (stage IV matesticized non-hodgkins lymphoma; central florida right on the atlantic ocean), i brought one dress. for nine days, i wore this one dress. i considered it my "power dress", because i needed all the help i could get, and so shopped particularly for it , and knew exactly when i had found it at the store (the only dress of its kind at the H&M store in downtown san francisco; slate gray cotton jumper adorned with crimson & cream roses, empire waisted & cinched with a thick ribbon at the back, hitting below the knee, and billowing in a circle in windy conditions), and knew that wearing this one dress would accomplish Things for me on my impending harrowing chemotherapy-support errand. my one-dress hypothesis was a polyphony, and did raise secondary implications, such as would the dress smell bad at the end of the trip, and also, accordingly, would i ever again wear this dress.
13 reasons for the Nine Day Power Dress
1. it would be like a uniform, which would lend simplicity to packing, dressing
2. it would be like a uniform, which would provide protection from judgment in mirrors & from others
3. it would be like a uniform, which would send the message that things are not usual--as when a person travels with a suitcase filled with clothing items intended to manipulate as events and weather dictate for the duration of the trip--but rather navigating the inverted horror of a parent with a terminal disease.
4. it would be, according to my aesthetic tastes, wholeheartedly "me" and thus i would remember: i do not myself have cancer. i am vital,vibrant, and healthy.
5. it would be like a portable altar, the wearing of which would be the act of praying. that he will be ok. that i will be ok. that the swirling sadnesses are justified by the knowing of the cosmos, and that nothing is as senseless as it seems. and the heaviness.
6. it would be like a uniform, as i would be acting the nurse
7. it would denote that i am not fooling around: ego & vanity, take a backseat. summon strength
8. it would be a desperate act of beauty, or a beautiful act of desperation--an exasperated and incandescent art-prayer, like a worrying stone or a rosary, or a letter written to a gone-person and burnt before the eyes of deer in some pyre by the sea/in a forest
9. it would distract me
10. it would swathe me in a lovely fabric. my body in the dress, and so the girl in the light
11. it would later become a talisman. my body sweating in the dress, and sew the girl in the light. sand in the seams
12. it would not be a dress from my current rotation and thus it would be unruinable-- a bit of virgin cloth to an impending heavy set of days
13. it would Let Others Know I Am Freaking Out