She put it on first thing when she came into the kitchen in the morning. Saddling up, Dad called it. "It's my uniform, "she would say, like the coveralls Dad wore on the farm. Mom loved to personalize her apron. When Dad went off to war, she sewed on one of his regimental patches.
Through the years she added other things. There was a scrap of tartan from my grandpa's old kilt. She sewed on a piece of gray satin she said shone like Granny's hair. There were remnants of my sisters' favorite dresses and bits of our baby blankets. When I earned a badge as a Boy Scout she proudly sewed a duplicate one on her apron.
One of the most striking additions was a tassel on top of the bib. It was from the marker she had used in her Bible. The marker had worn out, but not the tassel. She declared its golden threads reminded her of the glories of heaven, of a life that laster forever.
When she changed aprons, she laboriously unstitched the patches and resewed them onto the new one. She must have been on her sixth or seventh apron when I went away to college. That day I leaned down to hug her and felt the patches graze my shirt. Dad and I shook hands.
I had been gone for two months when I learned of Mom's failing health. I came home to be with her for the last month of her life. It was devastating. Often I felt myself fighting tears. Dad remained stoic. We knew he was sleeping badly-we rerely heard his reassuring snores. But he didn't speak of his pain.
On the night of the funerall I woke up restless and went into the kitchen. I heard Dad snoring. He was asleep at the table, no in his usual chair, but at Mom's place. As I watched him in the moonlight, I realized this man wasn't really so different from me after all. We'd loved the same woman, and even now her love was drawing us close. For under his head, pressed against his cheek, was Mom's apron.
by David Lyon McCallum, Edmonton, Alberta