When Rosa said she stopped after the first cut because she could see how the work was done — because the density and layering told her someone had spent a very long time on this — she was reading seven years of practice in the threads. That is what it takes to make work that reads that way. You cannot shortcut to it. You cannot explain it quickly. You can only accumulate it, hour by hour, over years, and then have it in your hands when you need it.
The addition I did during the repair — the continued stem with two leaves — was done with those same hands. It took one evening. But it took one evening plus seven years, and I want to be exact about that.
## The Moment I Decided to Go to the Wedding
The decision to go to Elise’s wedding was not automatic. I want to be honest about that. For about two weeks after I got the dress back, I was genuinely uncertain whether I would go.
Not because I wanted to make a statement. Not to punish anyone. Just because I wasn’t sure I had enough of myself reconstituted to sit in a room for five hours and be generous to everyone present. I was still raw in a way I kept having to acknowledge and didn’t particularly want to.
What changed my mind was a conversation with Ben on a Wednesday evening about three weeks before the wedding. We were making dinner — Ben was doing something complicated with the stove and I was cutting vegetables, which is our standard division of labor — and he said, ‘What’s the actual risk of going?’