Paradox Blog

By my bed, the nightstand table has three drawers. In one, I keep some jewelry, nothing expensive, another, my underwear. In this middle drawer, it is full of scarves that belonged to my mother. There are fifteen of them plus half a dozen handkerchiefs. My favorite one has a purple frame and ivory background with bluish green vines and purple flowers in the middle. I wear it in the fall when the weather starts to turn a little chilly. I have never seen my mother wear this one. Her favorite was one with brown color and patterns of little squares and circles in meshes. She wore it with her oversized silk shirt and black pants. She had a sense of style.

In an old picture of hers, she wore a yellow silk scarf around her hair standing by her motorcycle with me about five years old on the backseat. That scarf is still here in perfectly good condition. It has a classic print of brown fractal like flowers and leaves pattern. She was beautiful, slender and tall in the picture.

I showed the scarves to my daughter one time. She was all bright eyed and giggled with excitement seeing the display of such colorful tapestry. She put them on one at a time, marveling at this new experience. I watched her and saw myself when I was much older than she is now but still a child going through my mother's drawers in the closet finding treasures like these scarves, her jewelry and other novelties or keepsakes she tucked away in there. I remember the yellow scarf and another red one with similar pattern that were there for the longest time. Her scarves collection began to grow when her friends in their mid-life started to travel abroad and brought back scarves for her as souvenirs. She did not get to travel until I came to the states to study. Then, she came to visit me and to see how I was doing.

I hardly use handkerchiefs but my mother did. She used not those embroiled ones she tucked away but cotton ones. She sweated a lot. She was overweight. She gained weight because there was no outlet for her when she reached middle age. Eating was probably her way of dealing with depression, anxiety and all the other issues life dealt her with.

There is this one scarf, smaller in size than the rest with one hand painted flower at one corner. It is perfect for my daughter. I could not wait to put it on her. Last winter, when she was not yet two year old, I had her wear it when we went to the stores. Somewhere in the store, she probably felt warm and took out the scarf and lost it. I found out only before we were ready to leave the store. We retraced our steps all over the store trying to recover it. I was near tear when we could not find it. I really did not want to lose anything of mother's anymore. Finally, I went to the clerks and asked them had someone found a scarf and left it with them? There it was, the scarf, one of the few tangible memories of my mother, on the table behind the store register counter.

My daughter takes after her father though some of my friends did say she reminds them of my mother. "The continuation of life" as a friend of mine put it, that is what they saw in my daughter. She has my mother's spirit. She probably will have my mother's sense of style as she fashioned different things as hats and scarves in play. In time, she will have this drawer full of scarves.