What My Mother Gave Me

      by Leslie Clark


Every time I clean my closet, and contribute the clothes
I no longer wear to some charity, there are some 
dust-coated items, unworn for years, that remain
in their designated places.  Though my mother was famous
for not knowing my taste in clothing–-odd, since she knew
me so very well in other ways–-I cannot bring myself
to give away the vest bedecked with images of African beasts,
the garishly flowered sweater, the sweatshirt with hand-embroidered
kittens and teddy bears, surrounded by pale pink hearts, that she
gave me that Christmas and birthday just before she died.

Each time I see these items I wonder, what was the portrait
of her eldest daughter in her mind?  Did she see me on some
safari of life?  A woman of bold, riotous color?  Someone 
with a gentler, pastel side that I never would show
to the world around me? I sometimes search for all those
prospects, but find only the woman in whose skin
and mind I’ve lived for all these years. I lost
my mother’s guidance much too soon, leaving me
to wonder what possibilities I could have created
through her alternate views of my reality.