My Mother's House Coat

I dreamed last night that I was wearing my mother's house coat. White with little flowers of yellow, red and blue printed all over it. Snaps down the front. Mother wore a house coat like that every afternoon for as long as I can remember. Not a great fashion statement, perhaps, but it was what she put on after work to relax.

I can see my mother, lying on the couch in the living room. Every afternoon she took a little nap for as long as I can remember. Her feet were crippled with arthritis. Amazingly twisted toes that once were straight. She had taken pride in her spike heels once upon a time. And the "Reid" legs. Mother's calves were nicely shaped and she gloried in them. Dancing with my father in her high heels, he would often say that it was how she kicked her foot up when she danced that had caught his eye at the Eagle Dance Hall in Cincinnati. He said he knew then that he was going to marry that girl.

It was an indignation to my mother when she had to start wearing practical shoes - a progression from pumps to loafers to something akin to a nurse's shoe.
But on the couch, she was barefoot and her gnarled toes would twitch a little. I marveled how she squeezed them into a shoe at all.

Mother would lie flat on her back, her legs, crossed at the ankle, her hand usually up at her neck sort of playing with the loose skin that fell into wrinkles beneath her chin. Her face looked as if she was thinking or dreaming - relaxed and peaceful. "I'm just going to close my eyes for a few minutes," she would say.

She would work in the yard. Clipping her camellia bushes, skimming the swimming pool, and washing down the patio. Mother was always busy with chores. Except in those moments when she would close her eyes for a few minutes.

Mother was a fastidious house keeper. When I was growing up, I would no sooner get out of bed in the morning, when she would have the bed all made up. She took pride in how she made a bed. Never did she fold the top of the bedspread down and set the pillows on top of it. She would pull the bedspread up over the pillows and then with a karate chop movement create a straight crease. I never tried to flip a quarter on the bed, but if I had, I'm certain it would have passed the military standard for bed-making. Yes, Mother made my bed. She did my laundry. She cooked me breakfast every morning and we sat down to a hot dinner every night. An "Irish washer woman" she would sometimes call herself. The washing machine seemed always to be going. Her kitchen tile gleamed a shiny yellow. She loved a broom and dust pan and used them daily on the kitchen floor.

I knew she was slipping when the kitchen began to look grimy. It got sticky actually. And the dirt grew over an inch thick in the louvers of the service porch door. She still managed to do the laundry but making her king size bed was a chore. Sometimes there was no crease under the pillows at all.
The phone calls in the early morning became more frequent. Panic in her voice, she would ask, "What do I do now?" And I would give her instructions about her next step. Eventually the phone calls stopped. She couldn't remember how to use the phone. And so it went.

But Mother wore a house coat until the end. She took her last breath in one that was lavender with small flowers printed on it. My sorority sister, Camie Lee had bought it for her at Mervyns hours before. We had run out of clean clothes.

I'd not done the laundry.

She was cremated in it. There seemed no reason to change her outfit for the occasion.
She lay on her back, relaxed, peaceful.
Her hands crossed on her chest where I placed a camellia.
Her work was done.
No more chores.
Now she could once again kick her heel up while dancing in heaven with my father.