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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 class, 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.
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