The Apron

This morning while I was cleaning my house I was listening to some music and a song I hadn't heard since I was a little girl came on - "Coat of Many Colours" by Dolly Parton. This was one of my Mama’s favourite songs. My Mama always listened to the older style country music while I was growing up so it holds a place deep in my heart.

As I was listening to the song, I began to cry (people who know me will know I tend to do that a lot..I am like my Mama that way). I stopped and just kind of sat down and thought back to a random memory I haven’t thought about in years. The memory of an apron that my Mama made for me for Foods Class in Grade 9.

My mother suffers from Bipolar Disorder and for a time when I was younger (almost all of Grade 9) she lost her mind. There is about a year of my life where she was not the woman who raised me. She did not know I was, who my stepdad was, or even who she was. It took a toll on our family but a larger one on my sweet Mama. Even to this day she is not the same, thought luckily she is doing so much better and found a way through it all.

In the time she was gone, she would occasionally come back to me and I remember one incident where I told her I needed an apron for foods class, I expected her to just get my Stepfather to give me some money to go buy one. Or to forget entirely as it was not always guaranteed she could remember what I asked.

The next morning I woke up and she had made me one, to this day she does not remember making it at all, but it is something I still have to this day. The apron was sewn haphazardly and far too long (it went down to my toes). I am sure my mama thought I would just adjust it to my liking and just wanted to give me the base of what the apron was meant to be.

I didn’t adjust it though, I wore it the way it was made because my mama made it for me. I had quite a few people point out it was ridiculously long but I didn’t care. They, of course, would not have known how much effort went into it. That it probably took a lot for her to be present in the time it took to make it for me and how exhausting it may have been for her. My mama was not well at all so there was more love in the creation of that apron than even I could imagine at that time.

Looking back it was a single act of love I will never forget - from one of the most resilient and beautiful human beings I have has the privilege to know. As I cleaned today today I reflected on how much our mothers love us. That even when they have to leave us they always find a way to come through and be there. How even when her mind did not remember me, her heart did. Call your mama and tell her how much you love her. Even if she is not here anymore you can still tell her.

There are so many things our mothers do for us, we are not even aware of. The pain and sacrifices they make don’t stop when we grow up.