My childhood life was rich in love, understanding, kindness, empathy, and adventure. However, my family lacked money to the extent that there were no new clothes during Christmas or holidays as it is expected among children. My mother was a tailor, while my father was a carpenter. Furniture was not a problem at home because my father could make for the house. Our living room was smart and decorated with different designs of furniture, which was boosting our self-esteem when we had visitors.
There was little money from the carpentry business and tailoring. The funniest idea is that despite our mother making new clothes, it was not possible to buy new materials for our dresses. It was very challenging because our neighboring children wore new clothes each holiday. My mother thought of collecting pieces of materials cut from old and new materials as she made clothes and decided to sow them together and make us new dresses for the upcoming Christmas holiday. There was no money to buy new buttons leaving us with an option of removing from old clothes. To her dismay, the first clothing for our first-born was very beautiful because of many colors from many types of materials.
The best part was that my mother was a designer, so the scrap fabric was sewn together to assume the latest fashion of frilly dresses that children wore. ‘That is the best dress I have made in this season’ my mother spoke out excited and very encouraged to make the second one. Our first-born wore it immediately and out of great happiness of having new clothes, did not remove it until the other day. She quoted “I have never thought that one day I would be this beautiful. Thank you, mother, for the new dress”.
My mother was very enthusiastic while making the second dress for me. She poured out luggage of clothes and patches fixed to other clothes. One day was enough to make our Christmas dresses. She designed my dress to resemble that of first-class singers she had seen in a concert in the church. My mother was careful to connect us with godly ideas and items. She quoted Joseph of the bible that he wore a colored coat.
There were no challenges while making the clothes because they only required much work to join each part and match the colors, which my mother was perfect. I was very excited to have my dress finished and well ironed. As little children, we wore the clothes in the afternoon and walked to our neighboring households to show off that we had new clothes.
We could not hide our excitement because we called our friends with loud voices to boast of having new colored dresses. Together with my sister, we admired our dresses in front of them with great disbelief that we are smart. However, one jealous boy said ‘those are not designer clothes, they are bunches of rags sworn together to make up something to wear.’ Sooner than we realized, two girls started laughing at us, jeering, mocking, and pointing at us with great laughter.
However, at my little age, I did not allow anybody to belittle me, I shouted at them asking them to show their new clothes or go to their homes. Lucky enough we are the only ones with new clothes. They kept quiet and stopped their mocking laughter. My colored dress initiated the idea of refusing to be intimidated because of my current situation, which I still possess to date.
