After my mother died, I decided to gather twine from her frayed skirts and braid them into wreaths. I discovered that each skirt had a story:
The white one she wore when she married my father. It was a civil wedding, not a church wedding, but it was enough to legitimize me, even after my father left us and went back to his family’s hacienda.
The brown one she wore to church when she became a devotee of Our Lady of Carmel. After Mass, she knelt in front of the statue of Mary. She said countless novenas so that my father would return to us, but after I started to get into trouble in school, she prayed for me instead, prayed that I would do something with my life.
The black one she wore at my father’s funeral. She and I had traveled eight hours to get to Pampanga, and his family had snubbed us, and so we knelt in the back of the church and didn’t have the nerve to walk up to his coffin to view his body.
The yellow skirt she wore when my teacher called her in to tell her I ought to go to college and that she would help get me a scholarship.
The blue skirt was the one she wore when I graduated from school. Soon after, I found work in a newspaper and I was able to help her pay our bills.
The green one she wore the day she collapsed in the garden and died shortly after in the hospital.
I went through all her skirts, remembering bits and pieces of her life as I worked. It took me three months and when I finished I hung the wreath on my bedroom wall.
