Dear Wigleaf:

I write you from my car at 10 on Saturday night. Soon I will brave the labyrinth of a ritzy hotel to find my daughter at the seventh bat mitzvah of the school year. Two weeks ago (the sixth bat mitzvah), I abandoned my car with a DTLA hotel valet and rode a gilded escalator to the second floor. There, a little girl in a puffy dress melted down; a woman in a gold sequined dress slit up to her thighs hung onto a man with a bow tie; chaffing dishes held congealed food. Music pulsated from behind the closed doors of a ballroom. I dove through the doors and into the crowd. Strobing rainbow lights silhouetted a DJ. Women with pearls and diamonds and little black dresses and sling-back stilettos. Men with gelled hair and expensive suits and florid ties. The air smelled of sweat and heavy cologne. I was dressed, as I usually am, in a t-shirt, long skirt, big black boots, lumbering as I skirted the edge of the dance floor, looking for my daughter. Walking through arms flung out and hips moving and mixed drinks held while dancing and big hair and the crowd parting and closing behind me. I thought: I am always moving through a room, awkward and underdressed, toward someone I love.

XO, Lori

P.S. I found her in a different ballroom, her Vans perched on the rungs of a high stool, pink glow necklaces strung around her neck.




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Read Lori Sambol Brody's story.

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