Weaving Love: Making the Rainbow Bracelets

Weaving Love: Making the Rainbow Bracelets

Margaret Sha

This moment, I take out the tools and materials that my mother had left behind from the box and laid them out on the table. They are a beautiful pair of scissors, at least seven colors of colored thread, and twenty or so purple bells... Except for the scissors, all of the tools belonged to my mother and I have kept them for more than 20 years now.

My mother was a doctor when she was alive. Apart from healing and saving the patients, her biggest hobbies were designing clothes and making handcrafts. She bought a lot of tools to make handcrafts. From the small gardening hand tool for weeding in the garden to the big scissors for trimming branches and leaves, she could turn any tool into her “magic wand.” Amongst all the handicrafts, the one that impressed me the most is the rainbow bracelet that she used to make every year.

The fifth day of the fifth lunar month each year is China’s Dragon Boat Festival. Among many celebrations of the festival, there is a popular family custom of wearing hand-woven colorful bracelets as a blessing for health. The lore is that people who wear colorful bracelets on this day will be granted good health and happiness for the coming year.

Ever since I could remember, my mom would weave a rainbow bracelet for each of us five siblings, and my mom's handmade rainbow bracelets had always been praised as the most beautiful among the neighbors. My mother was a doctor, so she certainly knew good health does not come from the bracelet, but she believed that her love and blessings would cheer the home and her children up. So no matter how busy she is, she always made the rainbow bracelet overnight before the Dragon Boat Festival. Then on the morning of the festival, she would tie those gorgeous strings around our wrists, one by one, each with a different blessing that would put a smile on our chubby faces.

The colored strings actually had no name. My mother named them the rainbow bracelets because they were made of seven threads of seven colors. They are usually red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue and purple. Mom told us, these are the colors of a rainbow, so they are called rainbow bracelets.

The rainbow bracelets became a beautiful blessing for our family every year. Every time my mother made bracelets, we all gathered around her, eagerly watching the colorful threads being gently yet precisely woven into a bracelet in her hands. Slowly I also learnt the craft. The first string is used to measure each child wrist; then cut each colored strings by six times the length of the measurement; anchor down one end of the strings and rub the rest of the strings til the seven threads are intertwined; then repeat the process until you get a pretty rainbow bracelet. Sometimes my mother would even tie a little bell on the bracelet. As I walked, it would ring softly. I particularly liked it.

The rainbow bracelets my mother made brought us joy every year. However, this happiness suddenly ended with the death of my mother.

My mother passed away in that cold winter. My younger siblings and I were devastated beyond words. We spent the spring of that year in tears. As an older sister, I wanted to do something to ease the pain of my baby brothers and sisters.

Before we knew, the Dragon Boat Festival of the next year was at the door. I had just finished a TV show the day before the Dragon Boat Festival. I was living in the dormitory of the TV station for my work back then. I got up at 2 am and took a taxi home for an hour. When I got home, I opened the sewing box that it was left by my mother. I sat at the desk, like my mother did, weaving the rainbow bracelets for my young brother and sisters. While knitting, I felt my eyelids were fighting each other because of the exhaustion. But I insisted to finish the bracelets because I knew, if my mother were here, she would make us the best rainbow bracelets no matter how tired she must be after a day of operation. Although she is gone, her love was never lost，I want my young brother and sisters to to know that they still have this love.

When my brother and sisters woke up a few hours later, I tied the rainbow bracelets around their wrists, just as my mother used to do. When they put on the rainbow bracelets I made, they smiled with wet eyes. We held each other tightly, knowing that our family was not separated, ever, even though mother was gone. Nothing changed the love we share for each others, and from that moment we knew we had the strength to move on with our lives.

This rainbow bracelet once again connected our hearts with love. It was the first time I truly felt the blessings mother used to tell us. It was not only the blessing of health, but also the giving of love and the strength to support us to overcome the pain.

This year's Dragon Boat Festival is coming in a few days. Right at this moment, I am sitting by the desk at my home here in the US, oceans away from where my mother used to sit. Her colorful thread box lies quietly in front of me. I take out the threads, the bells, and an exquisite scissors I newly opened. I cut off seven colorful threads: red, orange, yellow, cyan, blue, and purple. I hear my mother saying, or perhaps myself saying to my daughter, “these are the colors of the rainbow. The rainbow is happiness; the rainbow is hope, and I want you to be happy forever."

If my mother could see me, see the daughter who was all clumsy back then, now weaving beautiful rainbow bracelets for her daughter every year, would she be happy? Would she be proud? I believe she would. These strings have carried on not only her craft, but also the unconditional love she had for the family, for all of her five children. And this love has guided and will continue to inspire me farther in creating my own wonders in life.