I bought this purple patchwork skirt for $5 in Venice Beach in 1990 and wore it while traveling and backpacking for years. Together we drank cappuccinos in Hemingways cafe in Paris, and espressos on the cliffs of Greece with the cafe owner who didn’t speak English. It was always my skirt, my journal, and me, sitting on the train station steps somewhere.
The skirt matched Monet’s gardens in Giverny, where I sat beside an 86-year old woman named Dorothy while she made watercolors of the lush weeping willows, dripping flowers, and floating lily pads.
I pulled the skirt up above my knees while riding in a gondola in Venice with my Norwegian lover, and tucked the bottom into my waistband so I would not trip while visiting Van Gogh’s grave and sunflower fields in Auvers-Sur-Oise.
This skirt has swam in the Aegean Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Adriatic and the Tyrrenhian Sea and many more. It is made of light cotton tiers, like colorful cotton candy, so it dries quickly. It rolls up small, looks fabulous wrinkled, and is perfect for kneeling on shop floors in Holland while chickens strut around you. After many years, the skirt started to shred, but I still loved it. I tucked it gently into my bin of cherished fabrics, along with my old dance costumes and my velvet bag sewn with patchwork stars, designed for tossing stars from the ship of dreams.
I was thrilled when my daughter chose a torn piece of it to make a dress for her doll. I secretly hoped the adventurous energy of the skirt would somehow spark into her little hands an electrifying desire for adventure, as she carefully fitted the dress and sewed it onto the doll with tiny fairy stitches.
Over the years, I occasionally come across the shreds of the skirt, and I am filled with memories of swimming in warm oceans under starlit skies, or dancing down a small village street in a far away land where an artist painted his pain into sunflowers that still take our breath away, the skirt always swirling around my bare legs.
I’ve considered making it into a quilt or a dress, but for now, it happily nestles in its gorgeous memories of magical moments. I always smile when I see my skirt.
Then I tuck a sunflower behind my ear and plan my next journey.
