The Elsa dress part 2 - a 4-year-old's nostalgia

My granddaughter, Fiona, four and a half, has officially grown out of her beloved Elsa dress, a costume based on the Disney heroine of Frozen. Her mom, my daughter Nellie, reported that the dress was retired to a closet some months ago, but recently came out again for Lucy. Little sister Lucy, going on two, now fits nicely into the Elsa dress, wears it floor-length and twirls about the room.

For a long time – a year? two? more? –  Fiona wore that dress perpetually: to the store, to bed, to daycare, for meals, for playtime, hiking, snowy outings, beach walks, you name it. It was the first thing into her suitcase when packing for weekends away. Her parents resisted briefly, then decided it best to choose other battles. The Elsa dress made morning dressing simpler, after all. (see blog 11/28/21)
 
The first time Lucy wore the dress, Nellie told me, she watched Fiona from behind. Fiona, head cocked, contemplative, gazed as Lucy swirled around the room.
 
“I loved that dress,” she said with unusual sentiment. Nellie felt a heart flutter.
 
The second time Lucy wore the dress, Fiona went quiet again, watching her little sister twirl in the ragged blue costume.
 
“Mommy, why is my brain making my eyes water?” she said, baffled by this inexplicable phenomenon. “Stop it, brain!”
 
Oh my dear child. Why does this story make my eyes water? Stop it, brain.