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The baggy yellow
shirt 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 class,
Mom. Thanks" I slipped it
into my suitcase before she could object. The yellow shirt
became 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 ye llow 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 o f
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, 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 chest 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 honey moon
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.
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