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Read it if you want heart
The baggy yellow shirt had long sleeves,
four extra-large pockets
trimmed in black thread and snaps up the front.
It was faded from
years of wear, but still in decent shape. I found
it in 1963 when
I was home from college on Christmas break,
rummaging through bags of clothes Mom intended to give away. "You're not taking
that old thing, are you?" Mom said when she saw me packing the yellow
shirt. "I wore that when I was pregnant with your
brother in 1954!"
"It's just the thing to wear over my clothes
during art Mom. Thanks!" I slipped it into my suitcase
before she could
object. The yellow shirt be came a part of my
college wardrobe. I loved it. After graduation,
I wore the shirt the day I moved
into my new apartment and on Saturday mornings when I
cleaned. The next year, I married. When I became pregnant, I
wore the yellow shirt during big-belly days. I missed Mom
and the rest of my family, since we were in Colorado and they
were in Illinois. But that shirt helped. I smiled, remembering that
Mother had worn
it when she was pregnant, 15 years earlier.
That Christmas, mindful of the warm feelings the
shirt had given me, I patched one elbow, wrapped it in holiday
paper and sent it to Mom. When Mom wrote to thank me
for her "real" gifts, she said the yellow shirt was lovely.
She never mentioned it again.The next year, my husband,
daughter and I stopped at Mom and Dad's
to pick up some furniture. Days later, when we
uncrated the kitchen table, I noticed something yellow taped
to its bottom. The shirt!
And so the pattern was set.
On our next visit home, I secretly placed the shirt
under Mom and
Dad's mattress. I don't know how long it took for
her to find it, but almost two years passed before I discovered
it under the base
of our living-room floor lamp. The yellow shirt
was just what I needed now while refinishing furniture. The
walnut stains
added
character.
In 1975 my husband and I divorced. With my three
children,
I prepared to move back to Illinois. As I packed, a deep
depression overtook me. I wondered if I could
make it on my own.
I wondered if I would find a job. I paged through
the Bible, looking for comfort. In Ephesians, I read, "So
use every piece of
God's armor to resist the enemy whenever he
attacks, and when it
is all over, you will be standing up."
I tried to picture myself wearing God's armor,
but all I saw was
the stained yellow shirt. Slowly, it dawned on
me. Wasn't my mother's love a piece of God's armor? My courage was
renewed. Unpacking in our new home, I knew I had to get
the shirt back to Mother. The next time I visited her, I tucked it
in her bottom dresser drawer.
Meanwhile, I found a good job at a radio station.
A year later I
discovered the yellow shirt hidden in a rag bag
in my cleaning closet. Something new had been added. Embroidered
in bright green across the breast pocket were the words "I BELONG
TO PAT." Not to be outdone, I got out my own embroidery
materials and added
an apostrophe and seven more letters. Now the
shirt proudly
proclaimed, "I BELONG TO PAT'S MOTHER." But I
didn't stop there.
I zig-zagged all the frayed seams, then had a
friend mail the shirt in a fancy box to Mom from Arlington, VA.
We enclosed an
official looking letter from "The Institute for
the Destitute," announcing that she was the recipient of an award for
good deeds. I would have given anything to see Mom's face
when she opened the
box. But, of course, she never mentioned it.
Two years later, in 1978, I remarried. The day of
our wedding, Harold and I put our car in a friend's garage to
avoid practical jokers. After the wedding, while my husband drove
us to our honeymoon suite, I reached for a pillow in the
car to rest my head. It felt lumpy. I unzipped the case and
found, wrapped in wedding paper, the yellow shirt. Inside a pocket
was a note: Read John 14:27-29. I love you both, Mother."
That night I paged through the Bible in a hotel
room and found the verses: "I am leaving you with a gift: peace of
mind and
heart. And the peace I give isn't fragile like the peace
the world gives. So don't be troubled or afraid. Remember
what I told you: I am going away, but I will come back to you
again. If you really love
me, you will be very happy for me, for now I can go to
the Father, who is greater than I am. I have told you these
things before they happen so that when they do, you will
believe in me." The shirt was Mother's final gift. She had known
for three months that she had terminal Lou Gehrig's disease.
Mother died the following year at age 57.
I was tempted to send the yellow shirt with her
to her grave.
But
I'm glad I didn't, because it is a vivid reminder of the
love-filled game she and I played for 16 years.
Besides, my older daughter is in college now, majoring in art. And
every art student needs a baggy yellow shirt with big
pockets.
 hina-25 · Sun Oct 02, 2005 @ 05:01pm · 3 Comments |
