Mother's Dress [Single Color Exhibition]

I had a dream about my mother.
Her face was in close-up, just staring at me.
“Mom.”
I called out in a small voice. There was no reply.

My mother was wearing a dress that holds special meaning for me.
The color of the clothes my mother wore was always a similar gentle shade.
Back then, I only thought of it as brown, but as an adult, I learned that the color is called raw umber.

And what my mother was wearing in my dream today was the dress I gave her as a gift when I first started working. It suited my mother in the dream very well.

It was a dress my mother wouldn't wear, saying it was too precious.
That dress was also in her favorite color, raw umber, and the white of the collar gave it just a slight sense of being for special occasions.

My mother wouldn't wear it, and I thought maybe she didn't like it.
One day, when I returned home from being out, I saw my mother taking it out of the dresser drawer and stroking it lovingly.

“Mom, try wearing it.”
I said that, but my mother shook her head.
“I love this dress too much to wear it. I'm happy just having it here like this. Maybe it would suit you better.”
At those words, I just thought of my mother's usual frugality and believed she would wear it eventually.

In the end, my mother never wore that raw umber dress.
She passed away suddenly, as if she had decided to wait until she saw me married.
The last words my mother said to me were,
“You wear that. It will watch over you.”
That was it.

After the funeral was over, I put on the raw umber dress.
“See? It suits you well.”
I felt like I heard my mother's voice.
While I held myself tightly in the raw umber dress, I felt at the same time that I was being held by my mother.

[End]

I participated in Asami Ishino's project.
Thank you very much.

#SingleColorExhibition
#RawUmber