Shades From The Past

While cleaning up and out, deciding what to toss, what to keep, I found this.  Years have passed since I wrote this, but the sentiment remains.

THE CHRISTMAS APRON

My sister was the one to break the silence first. Over the years of our adulthood, when we sadly grew too old for toys, we knew exactly what to expect when we opened our mother’s gift: a nightgown.  Finally, after about twenty nightgowns in a row, my sister loudly proclaimed, “Mom, we have enough nightgowns to last us into the twenty-first century.”

The nightgowns stopped.  Now that mine are finally wearing scandalously thin, my mother has decided to give us money, only money.  She has taken her stand and will not retreat.

The nightgowns still remain a joke among the three of us, but there was another gift in our Christmas package that took on a significance all its own, and that was my mother’s Christmas apron.

I can’t even remember when my mother started this Christmas tradition of hers, but there it was, each Christmas, wrapped in white tissue paper, an apron of my mother’s design, sewn on her very old machine, and sometimes, to add extra fillip, my mother would stitch one of those labels, “Sewn by Ruth.”

There was a time in my life when I wasn’t so appreciative of my mother’s handiwork.  Throughout my childhood, my mother made my clothes, when all I longed for was something store-bought.

Those were the days when girls wore dresses to school.  When it was cold and snowy, we’d wear snow pants underneath the dresses.  It was simply unheard of to wear pants or jeans to someplace as important as school.

So, Mom would take us to the fabric store, where my sister and I would pick out the material we liked and the patterns that pleased us.  Then Mom would go up to her bedroom and sew away.  She had an old treadle machine; and, when we each in our turn reached seventh grade and the dreaded home economics class, we learned on that machine, moving our feet, turning the wheel, watching the stitches fly.

It was in seventh grade also that I received the gift of a lifetime, a store-bought skirt. How silly that must sound now.  My daughter, for example, despite my urgings, doesn’t even know how to sew on a button.  So a store-bought skirt means nothing to her.  But for me, oh, I was in heaven.

I remember my purchase still.  Because I was now in junior high, I would be going to boy-girl dances down at the school every Friday night.  So I was allowed to select something extravagant.  My choice was one of those full-circle skirts, black taffeta, and, oh, how it rustled when I walked and danced.  I loved touching it.  It was exquisite.  I wore it week in, week out, and never felt anything less than fetching and elegant in it.

The magic of store-bought goods began to fade over the years, especially as nothing ever fit just right and nothing really gave me the thrill of that first black magic skirt.  And so, when I began receiving hand sewn aprons every Christmas, I was delighted.

The first years were perhaps my mother’s best.  The aprons were three-pocket affairs, a button at the neck and colorful flounces.  But over the years, the aprons became more simple, more basic.  No buttons, just the slip-over variety.  No frilly ruffles, just binding.  Then there was the year she sent my sister and me aprons with only one pocket.

My sister exploded.  How, she asked our mother, were we to use aprons with only one pocket?

Next year we got two pockets, but small pockets, not large enough for our hands and barely able to hold a couple of tissues for emergency onion peeling.

The year my father had his heart attack, I thought would be an apron-less one.  But my mother rallied.  There was an apron in my Christmas package.  I was surprised and elated.

My sister, though, stepped in and spoiled things again.  She had the nerve to tell my mother she didn’t need any more aprons; and besides, she could get better store-bought ones.

The next year my mother didn’t send any aprons.  I called at Christmas to thank her for her gifts and wheedled, “But where’s the apron?”

“I’m not making aprons anymore.”  Crisply said, the way Mom said something when she was on the defensive.

“But—  Your aprons are the only gift that mean anything to me.”

“Well, your sister says—“

My sister!

A few months later I got a package from my mother.  I opened it up and there was an apron, red apples on a blue background, nice and colorful.  I called her up right way to thank her.

The following year there were no aprons.  From September onward my father was failing.  Just before Christmas he died.  I fear there will never be an apron in my future again.

I suppose I fear more than that.  I’m afraid that some day the once-a-week, handwritten letter from my mother, filled with paragraphs on the weather and what books she’s reading, will also stop.  I realize that some day I won’t have any reason to call the telephone number I memorized before I went to kindergarten.  I fear that the light that links me to my past and gives me bearings for my future will dim and flicker and fade away.

I’m tied to your apron strings, Mom.  Don’t ever leave me.