Thank You, Seal

 Or: The Church Thrift Store Off Route 199

It was nearly 90 degrees when my daughter needed to use the bathroom.

We were in between errands and heading towards home with a too-long stretch of road ahead in the heat. I glanced back in my rearview and see red cheeks and patience thinning. She’s sensitive to temperature, to clothing seams, to unexpected transitions. The kind of kid who notices everything, and can’t always keep it inside.

I spotted a small church with a thrift store attached and almost pulled over on instinct.

Not because I needed anything. Not because I had time.

Because she needed a safe place to pee, and I needed grace.

We talked through the bathroom options as we kept driving  — the café, the grocery store, the parking lot of a nearby trail. She asked about the noise in each place, gauging her safety and rejecting all. And when she chose the thrift store - an unknown to both of us - something unspooled gently in me. A moment of permission. I turned the car back around.

The women inside — grandmothers, or close enough — smiled without asking questions.

They nodded when I asked if she could use the bathroom. One of them gestured gently toward the back, as if this sort of detour was a familiar kind of sacred.

There was air conditioning. Clean tile floors.

And a small deaf dog named Seal, who wagged her tail when we came out. My daughter sat calmly on an amusingly large chair while I asked after kids’ summer clothes (none in her size)  because I wanted to offer something in return. Instead I quietly found two dresses — a modern Edwardian-style one in embroidered cotton (maybe for me?), and a Fashion Bug piece that looked like something Taylor Vaughn would’ve worn her freshman year, just before the  push-up bra and her Queen Bee reign. 

Or perhaps it's the kind of dress you might have worn to your first summer potluck. The one where the Country Time lemonade mix was electrically sweet, your sandals made you taller than your crush, and someone’s mom played hymns on a keyboard while the kids ran wild behind the church.

I bought the dresses and spent the money as a thank you.

It felt like an expensive bathroom break from one perspective — but from another, it was a tiny offering. A tithe to the patron saint of moms with toddlers. A soft place to land. A moment of unremarkable kindness that meant everything in the moment.

Not every sourcing trip is a win. Not every dress becomes a listing.

But this moment? It’s going somewhere — maybe not in the shop, but perhaps in the archive.

A small reminder that grace sometimes looks like a clean restroom, a wagging tail, and a rack of forgotten dresses waiting quietly under humming lights.

Thank you, Seal.

We made it through the afternoon.

Epilogue: What is Sewn into the Hem

There’s a quiet question figuratively stitched into the hem of this dress — one I didn’t know I was asking when I pulled into that church parking lot.

How much space am I allowed to take, even while mothering, especially with a child who is wired differently? How much of myself can I carry alongside the snacks and wipes and loose schedule?

It wasn’t just about needing a bathroom.

It was both about needing a moment to remember I’m still here, too, and to gently make room for both of us.

That dress, lavender rayon and all, became something more than a funny find. It became a small, sacred test:

Can we have this tiny detour?

Can I let myself linger — even for three quiet minutes — with no purpose beyond presence?

Maybe this isn’t just about the dress.

Maybe it’s about learning to thread myself back into the story.