It takes a village – and the Peoples of Israel – to get me out of a dress

I never let anyone buy me clothes.

This is because I am extremely specific about what I wear, and because at some point I went down the facial-analysis rabbit hole and discovered that I am an Ethereal Romantic with a slight Natural/ Gamine twist.

This means I wear very specific things that complement my facial harmony.

I realize I have already lost approximately half of you reading this.

Stay with me.

Despite this, an incredible woman I know from the Philippines, who works here as a caregiver, gave me what has become my absolute favorite dress for my birthday.

And somehow she NAILED IT.

It is exactly the right shade of plum for a True Spring. There’s a subtle brocade texture that works beautifully with the Romantic part of my features, and a whimsical keyhole neckline that complements the elongated Ethereal structure of my face.

I have now lost another 20 percent of you.

Whatever. The remaining 30 percent of you are my people.

Last night, a friend and I were scheduled to have literally the most whimsical evening imaginable at the American Colony Hotel.

We’re talking fairy lights. Hendrick’s gin. Beautiful food. And the kind of service you rarely encounter in Jerusalem, where no one acts personally betrayed when you ask for another glass of water.

Now, you may not know this about me, but while I am fundamentally a hippie with a strong streak of Maria von Trapp, I also enjoy occasionally leaning into an alter ego I call Baroness von Schrader.

Baroness von Schrader does not carry a tote bag filled with half-eaten Bamba, wet wipes, and a single tiny sock.

Baroness von Schrader does not spend her mornings negotiating with a four-year-old about whether trousers are an instrument of fascist oppression.

Baroness von Schrader drinks gin beneath fairy lights and says things like darling for absolutely no reason.

So obviously I knew which dress I had to wear.

Because I believe in experiences.

Life is painful and strange and much too short, and sometimes the only reasonable response is to take an ordinary Monday night and make it spectacular.

And the plum dress was going to make it spectacular.

There was only one problem.

The dress has a tiny button at the back of the neck.

A beautiful, delicate, whimsical little button.

Designed, apparently, during an era when women had ladies’ maids.

Fortunately, my almost-17-year-old son had been staying with us for a few days.

“Can you button this?”

He rolled his eyes with the profound weariness of a teenage boy who has somehow been born to Baroness von Schrader.

But he did it.

And off I went.

The evening was glorious.

The American Colony does not disappoint.

The gin was cold. The fairy lights twinkled. The service was impeccable.

The dress made me feel like minor Central European royalty whose family had lost most of its estates but retained several excellent pieces of silver.

There is a reasonable chance I spoke in a fake accent.

There is a near certainty I said darling.

And then I came home.

My almost 17-year-old was gone.

My four-year-old was asleep.

And Baroness von Schrader discovered that she was trapped inside her own dress.

I could not get the damn button undone.

I twisted.

I reached.

I contorted my arm into positions that should have required years of advanced Pilates.

Nothing.

And this is one of those very specific single-mother moments nobody warns you about.

Not the big things.

You prepare for the big things.

You figure out childcare and school and bills and groceries and doctors and bedtime and how to carry a sleeping child while also carrying six bags and unlocking a front door with your teeth.

It’s the tiny things.

Like standing alone in your bedroom at 11 p.m., dressed as minor Austro-Hungarian nobility, realizing you may have to sleep in brocade because there is no other adult in the house to operate a button.

I began considering my options.

The neighbors?

They are lovely people. They let my son walk their dog.

But we had not yet reached the stage in our relationship where I knock on their door at 11 p.m. and say, “Good evening. Would you mind undressing me?”

Another neighbor?

Perfect candidate.

Unfortunately, she is currently in Central Europe, presumably somewhere Baroness von Schrader would actually summer.

The grocery store?

Closed at 10.

A taxi driver?

This possibility received considerably more serious consideration than it should have.

I briefly pictured myself standing on the sidewalk in plum brocade, flagging down a Gett and saying:

“Don’t take me anywhere. I just need you to unbutton me.”

Which felt like the beginning of either a very good short story or a police report.

And then I started scrolling through my phone.

Because here is the funny thing about being a single mother.

Sometimes you feel very, very alone.

There is no other grown-up automatically there.

No one in the next room to say, “Can you open this jar?” or “Can you hold him for a second?” or “Can you please release me from this aggressively whimsical garment?”

But as I looked through my contacts, I realized something.

I actually had people I could call.

Friends who would have laughed hysterically and then come over.

Neighbors who probably would have opened the door.

People who have helped with my son.

People who have helped with moves and meals and emergencies and the thousand strange logistical disasters that make up a life.

A whole ridiculous, imperfect village.

The Peoples of Israel, basically.

And there I was, stuck inside a plum dress given to me by a Filipina caregiver, after an evening at an East Jerusalem hotel, contemplating asking one of my Jewish or Palestinian neighbors to liberate me from a button.

Honestly, it felt extremely on brand.

In the end, though, I tried one more time.

I bent my arm backward.

I swore in at least two languages.

I invoked Baroness von Schrader, Maria von Trapp, and several generations of women who definitely had help for this sort of thing.

And…

POP.

Freedom.

I got myself out of the dress.

(I canceled the order on GETT.)

Because sometimes it takes a village.

And sometimes the village reminds you that they’re there.

Even when, in the end, you manage the damn button yourself.

For more stories like these, I hope you’ll read my new book Fairy Lights in God’s Backyard: A Jerusalem Love Story