Lavender Dress

In Lavender Dress, we weave threads of the author’s memory of her Lola Iddi and her own being. As calming as lavender and as heartfelt as the process of sewing, the author takes us on her journey of slowly redefining love in their family.

Marking

If you would ask me how childhood feels like, I could tell you about the beautiful sunsets witnessed on the rooftop of my childhood home, I could even show you a photo of my 5th birthday with my face covered with chocolate ice cream, or I could tell stories of hiding in the closet in hopes that I would be transported in another dimension once I shut my eyes and believe in it. I could tell you how memorable those moments are to me but they won’t be able to encapsulate how looking back at little Chrystel feels like. Instead, I will show you a small lavender dress that fitted me beautifully when I was six years old. The silk lavender fabric glistens as I dance and sing to Michael Buble’s “Sway” with my tiny feet and little voice. The lavender dress was tailored especially for me by my one and only Lola Iddi. It is impossible to talk about my childhood without talking about that very moment and without talking about my Lola Iddi who knew so much about me. 

I look at the small lavender dress and I become six. My brother and I are both rushing back to our childhood home in Caloocan, not minding all the branches that might trip us as we dash through the narrow pavements which is our very own shortcut. It is already past six in the evening and we are too engrossed with playing patintero and tagu-taguan with our friends who live four buildings away from ours. Again, like always, we lose track of time. Running as fast as we can, we try to beat the changing mood of the skies as it turns from orange to black and hope that it is Lola who will be waiting for us at our door, a towel in her hand, greeting us with, “Agdigos kayon mga apo. Aglulutak ti pangrabii. Paborito yo,” followed by the smell of bay leaves from her afritada. 

The first challenge was to beat our curfew and the next was to successfully tiptoe our way to the bathroom. Before you can wash off a day’s worth of dirt, you would have to pass by different fabrics laid out on the floor, only pieced together by tiny needles and marked by different crayons. When night comes, after dinner, I would watch how my Lola threads different pieces of fabric together. There were laces, silk, and cotton in different colors. There was never a night when no one would knock at the door and ask for Lola. She was a known seamstress in their Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation and in the neighborhood. Even neighbors in the farthest building would go all their way to see the “tall seamstress in Building V-112” or “Nanay”, depending on how many times they have asked for her tailoring services. In our family, when our aunties needed something to be tailored or altered, everyone would go directly to our Lola, their Inang. When it’s from us, Lola would insist that our parents don’t need to pay. However, as it’s something that we know Lola works hard for, my parents still give her money saying that she could use it to buy more materials or buy more of her favorite milk. Lola’s kitchen table would not be complete without a can of her favorite Bear brand milk sitting as the centerpiece. Lola was a six-footer and my father said that drinking milk everyday had something to do with it. However, it seems like her tall height was hereditary because my father as well as his siblings were able to acquire it. But I, the closest I can get to being called as my Lola’s granddaughter was the shape of our chinita eyes. 

A smiling photo of Lola Iddi

I can only hope that she was able to look at herself the same way that this pair of eyes adores her. I see her as the fairy godmother of Cinderella who could turn pieces of plain silk and cotton into something that resembles a beautiful lilac field that I only see on the television. I fondly remember taking interest in her left-over fabrics; there were a lot of them in different colors, textures, and cuts. I would find the longest of them all, place it on my head, secure it with a headband, and I would dance around our small unit with my now long colorful hair. I would close my eyes and feel like I was in control of everything. 

One evening, upon going home from a whole day of playing, I heard the voices of my parents laughing and chattering with Lola. At first, I was scared because it might mean that they will already take us home. But upon opening the door, my Lola was holding a beautiful dress. Its color was bluer than the lilac field, a color that was both gentle and strong, which reminded me of my mom’s Love Spell perfume. It is called “Lavender”; that night, I first learned about the color lavender and what it feels like to have a dress made just for you. A part of me was confused because it was not my birthday or any other special day but that didn’t stop me from jumping and shouting for joy.

Lola’s sewing machine

The silk lavender skirt of the dress catches the bright light and its laced details traveled from my neck and shoulders. Its big bow at the back complemented the headband that Lola also made for me. I danced and danced and danced the evening away with my beautiful lavender dress. As a six-year-old, the dress and the smiles of my parents and Lola made me feel that I was appreciated and loved. 

Her sewing machine was there to witness everything. It was with us with all the laughs and giggles that we’ve shared in our tiny room, it was there when I first went home wounded from playing, and it was there when I first received a dress that was tailored especially for me. The sewing machine was an old friend. But upon receiving it at our doorstep just a few weeks ago, it has become almost like a distant memory, something that is near yet so far. 

Altering

On my fourteenth birthday, I realized my life was drastically changing. In the middle of picture takings and endless chatterings, my relatives would always find a way to ask me about my decreasing appetite. My health-conscious aunt even lectured about malnutrition before they bid goodbye. It was in my second year in high school and I was in a very tough time in my life where I had to survive my academics and juggle a lot of extracurriculars. There were a lot of things where I directed my energy. The time I spent outside with my friends and teachers was greater than the time I spent with my family. The first time I saw my grandparents in years was when I needed my school uniform to be altered because I lost a lot of weight and my parents didn’t want to buy whole new sets of uniforms. I became too busy to even attend our once a year reunion. 

Years later, I was still in the same place. Burdened with deadlines and tasks as a sophomore college student, I went back and forth in our childhood home in Caloocan trying to recall the things I still needed to do for the day and those that I had failed to do. It was already a rare time for us when we came and visited our childhood home where Lola and Lolo reside. Its mint green walls, which were once full of stories and giggles, already reminded me of the mint green walls in my college dormitory and all the deadlines that I have to finish. Whenever we had the chance to have a reunion, I always carried my homeworks with me. I grew up always pressured to excel in my academics. Since then, I became alien to serenity and stillness while also being alien to a carefree life. It was hard to pinpoint the very reason why I always pressured myself because I know that it was the accumulation of different factors. But I know deep down that it was mainly because of my family. I want to give them a comfortable life because for a long time, they only dreamed of one. 

Lolo and Lola only finished high school. After graduating, Lola immediately started to be a seamstress in order to help her family. She then met our grandfather whose family was also just barely getting by. They surrendered everything to Jehovah and decided to get married at the age of twenty-three. With the little money they earned from Lola’s tailoring and Lolo’s work at a tobacco factory in La Union, they decided to start a family. My father was their first born out of seven children. 

Through hard work and the little allowance that Lola got from tailoring, my father was able to start off his education. He strived very hard—studying on his own while working full-time until he graduated. He was the one who financed the studies of his next three siblings until they were able to work hand in hand in helping the rest of the family. Because of my father’s hardwork and sacrifices, my titos and titas never failed to help us in ways they could. They said they are just giving back and sharing their blessings. However, I and my siblings still felt the need to give back to them. 

Ever since I heard this story, I faced the reality that education here in the Philippines is a privilege more than a right. I know that I owe my dreams to a lot of people who have been helping us. However, I wasn’t wary of my very conception of dreams and success. I believed that all things were measurable. Love, itself, can be measured. It is not enough to say that I am grateful, I had to do something to provide a solid proof. My dreams are reflected by my grades and achievements, so is love. My mind told me that I can only show my love for my family through all the sleepless nights and mental breakdowns that I’m willing to overcome to prove that I value the life they gave me—that I value my education. This belief was deeply ingrained in me by no one but myself. I believed that there is no better way to show my love and to give back than to offer them these achievements.  

It’s hard to believe that the personification of anxiousness and burnout is what has become of that girl who was once full of life at six years old, dancing to Michael Buble’s “Sway”, in her favorite lavender dress that was tailored especially for her by her one and only Lola Iddi. 

Lolo and Lola

That girl became too preoccupied, she didn’t realize that her Lola Iddi was also changing. It was 2018 when Lola started to lose weight drastically. She had to come once a month to the hospital to see her pulmonologist and cardiologist. Early 2019, she was confined for heart and lung complications. Thankfully after two weeks, she was released.

Later that year, as a sophomore in college, I was in a theatre production in UP Los Banos where I was a member of the Costume and Makeup Committee. For the first time in years, I’ve become personally involved with tailoring. I once again saw different pieces of fabric laying on the ground—silk, laces, cotton, even needles which reminded me so much of Lola. For a month, my days became filled with cutting and stitching different pieces of fabric in order to create the costumes for the characters. During my finals week, two weeks before the production, on one  unfaithful Saturday morning when I was preparing to visit the ukay-ukay stores to find the remaining costumes, my father called and told me the devastating news. Lola died of pneumonia. 

I believed I was doing well. I wanted to go home and tell my parents that I am receiving good grades and that I am doing my best in the university. Most of all, I wanted to tell Lola that I am now learning the basics of tailoring and I wanted to learn more from her—how I, too, will be able to make such beautiful creations like that of my favorite lavender dress. However, it was too late to tell her any of these. Little do I know that the reunion where I stressed over my pending deadlines would be the last reunion that I would have with my grandmother.

I am guilty that I was not by her side during her final moments. I was her only granddaughter that wasn’t in the hospital. Then it dawned on me, with all these measures of love for my family that I’ve conceived in my head, I am actually drifting away from them. 

With all the time that I’ve spent with Lola, I wasn’t able to properly thank her and tell her just how much I appreciate her. I was guilty that despite being her eldest granddaughter, I wasn’t able to spend more time with her and show my affection. We weren’t able to bond doing the things we both love because I was too busy trying to deal with life from a very young age that I forgot how it feels like to just quietly live in the moment and dance like the way I used to with my favorite lavender dress under the calm night sky with the people whom I dearly love. 

During her funeral in 2019, pain, sorrow, and guilt haunted me. My relatives tried to calm me down by reassuring me that Lola is now in paradise, that she is now reunited with Jehovah and she will not suffer in pain anymore. She looked at peace in her beige dress, surrounded by beautiful lilies. 

It was only now that I was able to fully accept that she is now in a much better place. But like how my dad never fails to mention Lola’s name whenever we would visit our childhood home, how he always attached her to the word “Inang”, and how he always told us to never leave a single rice on our plate just like what Lola taught her, we still remember and ache for Lola’s memories every now and then. I don’t think I will ever forget about her. Her memory stays and she visits us in many different ways. 

Stitching

Even if it’s hard, slowly, I walk towards my old friend. As I traveled my hand through the sewing machine’s body, I felt Lola’s presence, I felt her embrace. I remember her and I remember being six years old. That’s when it hit me, I am looking at things the wrong way. This mindset of always hustling made me lifeless and apathetic. I strive hard everyday for my family but I am actually becoming more distant from them. 

I may not know how to sew a dress and I may be still in the process of knowing where to start again but I know that my family and Lola will always be there to guide me. More than knowing how to sew or figuring my life out, my Lola comforts me that I don’t need to be guilty of anything. Looking back, she would always have this big smile while she listens to the stories behind my poorly drawn sketches of people, but it doesn’t look as bright as her smile upon just seeing us arriving at her doorstep—of us just being there. In her words, taking care of her grandchildren brought her the biggest joy. 

I am looking at the concept of life and family in the wrong way—I was giving back to the people I love in the wrong way. Lola wants me to reconnect with that six-year-old who had so much joy in the simplest things. I may have learned a lot more about life, but I am still the same Chrystel in her lavender dress who is capable of finding little joys in where she is. I could stitch back all the self-love I have lost. 

So if you ask about my childhood and I show you the lavender dress that she once made for me, you would know that I am never far from who I was before. I have gone through so much but I still have a lot more to learn like a child. Most times, when I want to feel at peace, I want to believe that I am still in my childhood and I can have unwavering faith in things that I want to have faith in. Like a six-year-old, I can stare at the clouds moving while listening to my Lola whistling her favorite Ilokano songs, and just be in that very moment, not guilty of taking my time. 

Remembering Lola makes me believe that I, too, can make my own lavender dress with the person that I am now, tailored by my own experiences. Maybe making my lavender dress would be a lifelong process of marking, stitching, and altering. I can even start all over again. The important thing is I will take my time in the process. It won’t be perfect but I could always start again if I want to, choose to, believe to. She reminds me that I can love without losing myself. Someday, I will be dancing to Michael Buble’s “Sway” with my lavender dress glistening under the moonlight and when that time comes, whenever it may be, I will dance more than I ever did and I will love more than I have ever loved when I was six. 

Lola, I know you will always guide me from above. 

---

About the Author