my mother's clothes

There is an old picture of my mother and her brother, where she's leaning on a car and staring straight

at the camera. She's wearing a high waisted skirt with a tucked in polka dotted shirt. Her hair was long,

longer than mine ever was. I've spent a lot of time as a kid, simply scattering her pictures on the floor,

and looking at them. 

These days when we go shopping, my mother sits down somewhere, and says,

"Call me when you pick something." She's getting old. She agrees with whatever I pick, and

sometimes she barely even glances at it. 

I remember when she was ecstatic about picking my clothes. She had ideas. On non-uniform days

she would ask me before bed, "what're you wearing tomorrow?" When I feel uncomfortable in my

clothes I think about this one specific photo of my mother- and how she leans on that car.  

I was thinking about my mother's clothes. She has an abundance of it, it always made me jealous. 

My mother, on the other hand, was always jealous of her mother's saree collection.

Ammama has three cupboards filled with sarees. My mother and I have attempted to count them, but

we got too tired, so we still don't know how many she actually has. 

In the recent years there have been things that aggressively remind me of my body, of the way it's

growing outside of me. I am no longer the only person that sees my body. 

Now older men shoot glances at me on the streets, as opposed to a few years ago when the

only eyes that would notice me were of young, impressionable boys. I'm uncomfortable to step

outside in home clothes, because my thighs are large and they wobble like water when I walk.

My female friends compliment me more often about how I look, but in my school years hardly anyone

ever informed me that I looked a certain way. I could walk around with disheveled hair or faded clothes without thinking for

a moment about my presentation. When lovers see me naked, they slow down and look at me:

everything is devoured. 

Perhaps the most stirring of all these experiences was when my mother handed me her clothes.

Suddenly I am painfully aware that I am a woman, and my body has grown out of my reach.

I don't really fit into her large clothes, but I wear them, and they dangle off my wrist, and down my chest.

I like them because they're just a little big, not too big to envelope my body but also not aligned enough to

stick to my breasts and my back. 

Occasionally, my mother has spurts of excitement where she once again turns young through me. We

went shopping for a saree, something only slightly grown women will find joy in doing. I let her pick

everything out, and simply agreed. I realized that, in fact, she is simply dressing me up in what she wishes

to wear. Maybe this is painful because my mother doesn't have a stomach that sticks close to her body or

a long, slender neck, or back that curves and falls. 

If it really was painful, she didn't let it show for a bit. All I saw was genuine delight in her eyes at the

thought of me in a saree- and that's when I truly felt sad. I made up my mind to write about her, and

inevitably began thinking of mothers. It is only natural that they live through their daughters.