Recently I went through the girls closet at our house and gave away the clothes they’d outgrown.

Some of the clothes were the princess dresses the girls had. I didn’t think I’d ever want to part with them, but a friend’s daughter was the right age for the dresses.

I realized it was selfish to leave those pretty dresses hanging unused in the closet when I knew her daughter would enjoy them.

One was a simple purple dress I made. It wasn’t fancy, but the dress was long and had lace. The fanciest one was a dress I found in a dress store at least 15 years ago.

The light pink dress was full of tulle and lace and, when the wearer twirled, the dress flowed out in a beautiful circle. The dress itched our younger granddaughter, so she didn’t wear it very often.

But my friend’s daughter absolutely loved the dress, and she wore it all the time. Knowing the dress was being enjoyed by a young girl absolutely made my day.

I thought back to the days my Aunt Bev would let my cousin and me play in her closet. Aunt Bev was a “girly girl,” and she had a closet full of beautiful clothes and accessories.

She let me try on all her gloves, and that was back in the day when the gloves came up to our shoulders, the tiny pearls at the wrist an extra beautiful touch.

We’d try on her hats and spray perfume on our necks, just like we’d seen our moms do when they were getting dressed up.

I spent many hours sitting at Aunt Bev’s make-up table with the three-paneled mirror. The flat part of the dresser held tubes of lipstick, powder and blush, three “tools” I used with abandon.

She never fussed at us for messing up her things, an extremely gracious thing for her to do. As an adult, I thanked Aunt Bev many times for allowing us to play in her closet and to allow us to believe we were really princesses.

There’s something magical about playing dress up, both for girls and boys. My sons loved dressing up as superheroes when they were young. They especially loved capes.

We had a black cape for when they felt like Batman, a red one for the days they wanted to scale tall buildings – an overturned kitchen chair – and a green cape for the days they pretended to be the Green Lantern.

True Spiderman and the Green Lantern did not wear capes, but in a young child’s imagination, capes are a necessary part of the superhero wardrobe.

We also had a Flash costume complete with a headdress and yellow boots. There was also a Wolverine costume, realistic down to the plastic adamantium claws.

Many times, they’d dig around in our closets, looking for bandanas, boots, hats or anything else they could use to create what they saw in their imaginations.

When they put on those costumes, they believed they were somebody else, usually superheroes. They jumped off the couches, making sound effects like they were squirting a web or slashing a bad guy’s cape.

For hours, they’d wear those costumes and live in their fantasy world. Watching them, I was transported back to my Aunt Bev’s closet. My boys might’ve been Superman, but I was an exotic fashion icon from the hat on my head to the high heels that were five sizes too big.

I hope my friend’s daughter never loses her willingness to play dress up, just as I hope my son and son-in-law teach their 2-year-old sons that it’s okay to let your imagination run wild.

And never forget the childlike joy in pretending.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.