This story is the complete opposite of Dolly Parton's song Coat of
Many Colors – no drama, just laughs.
The sewing stories I wrote about recently have reminded me of the
winter coat Mom made the year I was a freshman in college. I think
the project was more of an experiment – Mom wondered if she could
make a coat, so she set about to do just that.
Mom's
favorite color was green. The wall-to-wall carpet we eventually got
for the new living room at Zimmerman, which was a few months after
the sewing of the coat, was green. And the winter coat looked a lot
like a green carpet – thick and plain.
The pattern Mom got for the
coat did not have buttons – just a band to go around the waist and then tie the coat shut in
front. The sewing of buttonholes was not something Mom was afraid of
– although they always seemed rather daunting to me – but
the opportunity to make a winter coat with thick green-winter-coat-material without buttonholes was one that Mom was happy to undertake
for this, her first coat.
Well,
Mom was pleased with the finished product. And she was especially
pleased that she and Dad would not have to invest in a new winter
coat for me to wear when I went to college. I myself was okay with
the coat – college was going to be expensive and I truly wanted to
cause as few financial ripples as possible. To me, it was just a coat
– nothing too weird about it – even the band to
tie the front shut did not seem especially strange.
I
have to stop here because there is a phrase that keeps going through
my head while I type and I just have to interject this story.
There
is a picture we have of Mom at about the age of six. If you saw it,
you would say it is a very nice picture of a little girl. For Mom,
however, the picture would trigger a few
emotions. The dress she is
wearing in the picture was hand-made by her mother. And Mom hated the
dress – not because it looked bad but because it was hand-made and
her mother told her to wear it.
 |
| Mom at 6 in the "it's warm" dress |
When Mom complained that she
did not like the dress, her mother said, “it's warm.”
Why
would anyone complain about a piece of clothing if it was keeping one
warm?
And
so as I tell you about the winter coat Mom sewed for me, all I
can hear in my head is, “It's warm!”
The
coat was warm – warm enough for standing at the bus
stop to get to and from school most winter days. (Some days in
Buffalo were so cold there could be no coats warm enough –
especially when the wind was blowing and the snow drifts were deep
and the bus I wanted to catch I had just missed, and it would be 45
minutes standing there in the cold because there was nowhere else to
go and nothing else to do until the next bus came along.) And the
coat was warm enough the Saturday nights we parked downtown and
walked a block or two to Memorial Auditorium to watch the Griffins
play basketball. And it was warm enough and practical enough that I
did not wish I had another coat instead that was prettier or more in
style – why would I?
“It's
warm.”
However - kids made fun of the coat, and after a while, I realized that the initial teasing I got about the
coat, from everyone at school - its unattractiveness, its wrap tie, my obvious complete
indifference to my appearance - this teasing continued long after my classmates'
first impressions of the coat. It finally sank in that the coat was
being laughed at – every time I had it on!
I
don't remember what I wore the winter of sophomore year –
but I am fairly certain the homemade coat was retired. I had been a
good sport, but I decided one winter was enough.
Yet the coat had served me well, and in spite of the ribbing I got
from friends, one still had to admit
“It
was warm.”
169
20150618 The Coat of One Color
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