Personal Development Articles

The Baggy Yellow Shirt

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 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 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 me wearing 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, ” 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 to wear to art class.

Patricia Lorenz

Patricia Lorenz is an internationally-known inspirational, art-of-living writer and speaker and the author of six books. She is one of the top contributors in the country to the Chicken Soup for the Soul books with stories in 26 of the Chicken Soup books so far. She’s had over 400 articles published in numerous magazines and newspapers; is a contributing writer for fifteen Daily Guideposts books; four dozen anthologies; and an award-winning newspaper columnist.

Patricia Lorenz has been a single parent since 1985. She raised two daughters and two sons, lives in Largo, Florida, loves her empty nest and the freedom to follow her dreams while she’s still awake. You can visit her website at: http://www.patricialorenz.com/ or email Patricia at: patricialorenz@juno.com

BEAUTIFUL (from e-mail)
> She was not beautiful.
> Nothing about her was extraodinary.
> Nothing about her made her stand out in a crowd
> She grew up in a family of six, the eldest.
> She learnt responsiblity at an early age.
> As she grew, stronger, brighter
> She instilled a sort of light and cheer to
> whomever she met.
>
> She was not beautiful,
> But she made others feel beautiful about themselves.
> She meets a rebel boy who thinks he is all man.
> Befriending him, she teaches him how to read,
> A little boost the ‘man’ needed to go to college.
> They become fast friends
> And she fell, fast in love with her rugged
>  handsome student.
> The ‘man’ then finds himself in a dilemma.
> He soon found himself in love with a girl.
> A girl who was so beautiful,
> She turned even the grouchiest men’s head.
> Her hair was a halo of light around her,
> Her eyes the bluest blue of the ocean.
> ‘Like an angel’ he tells his tutor.
> ‘Like a beautiful angel.’
> The girl swallows a lump at her throat.
>
> She was not beautiful.
> She did not possess the heart of the one he loved
> But she did not care.
> As long as he was happy, she would be or so
>  she tried to.
> She helped him write the most beautiful
>  letters to his angel,
> All the time visioning it was she herself
> Receiving those very letters.
> And so the girl helped him choose the right clothes,
> Say the right words, buy the right gifts for
>  his angel.
> His angel brought him much joy
> And much pain to the girl who cried behind
>  her smiles.
> But that never stoped her from giving more
>  than she will ever receive.
>
> Then one day, all hell broke loose.
> The angel he loved left him for another man,
> A richer more succesful man.
> The boy was stunned,
> Was so hurt he did not speak for days.
> The girl went to him.
> He cried on her shoulder and she cried with him.
> He hurt and so did she.
>
> Time went by. and so the wounds heal.
> The boy realises something about his
>  friend/tutor
> He never realised before.
> How her laughter sounded heavenly
> Or how her smiles brighthened up the darkest
>  days.
> Or how simply beautiful,
> Yes, beautiful she looked to him!
> >
> Beautiful.
> This plain, simple girl was beautiful to him.
> And he began to fall.
> Fall so in love with this beautiful girl.
>
> On one day, he picked up all his courage to
>  see her.
> He walked to her house, nervous and fidgeting,
> Running his thoughts over and over in his head.
> He was going to tell her how beautiful she
>  was to him.
> He was going to tell her how wonderfully in
>  love he was with her.
> He knocked. No one was home.
>
> The next day he found out.
> The beautiful girl he fell in love with had a
> brain aneurism that put
> her into a coma.
> The doctors were grim and the family decided
> to let her go.
>
> One final time he got to see her.
> He held her hand.
> He stroked her hair.
> And he cried for this beautiful girl.
> He cried for he’ll never see her smile or
>  hear her speak his
> name.
> He cried.
> But it was too late.
> The beautiful girl was buried
> And the heavens broke out in a beautiful
>  spring shower,
> A cry for their loss.
> She was the most beautiful girl in the world
> And she had taught the rebel boy-man to love
> >And what it is to be loved.
> She was the most beautiful girl in the world.
>
> Look around you.
> Aren’t there a lot of plain faces?
> Take a good look.
> A real good look or you might just miss out
>  that beautiful
> person.
> Forever.
> I should know…wouldn’t I?