Yellow Glove by Naomi Shihab Nye (1995)

“Whatever it is, I want it on your butt.”

That’s what my eldest sister said when I told her I couldn’t decide what I wanted for her tribute tattoo. She is silly, and fun, and patient, and you have never met anyone more loving in your life.

She is ten years older than me, so much of her growing up was done outside of my sphere of understanding. What I understood was this: she looked like a princess on prom night in her ice blue, fluffy dress, and like a queen at her wedding in her EXTREMELY 80s gown. I went through a phase of naming all of my stuffed animals after her, and the best days were when she would pick my other sister and me up from the babysitter. I was still in grade school when she moved out and got married. I was in high school when my nephew was born, still in high school when my niece was.

Over the years, I began to learn about the life she’d lived before I was born or while I was being a kid. We’ve all got those steep, broken pathways in our histories, but I’d been wrong to assume that she and I’d shared the same idyllic childhood. Obviously, hers is not my story to tell, but suffice it to say she’s been through her share of it. I was completely unaware—not just because my family is unskilled at broaching difficult subjects (we are working on it), but because anyone in the same room as my sister would never believe she’s endured what she has. She seizes upon joy and multiplies it. She unabashedly, unapologetically, loves you, and if you love someone? Guess what, so does she.

Her favorite color is yellow, and family lore is that she selected that color because she felt sorry for it since nobody ever picked it. To me, it seems like a totally natural choice. Yellow is pure joy. It’s warmth, it’s sunlight, it’s brightness, it’s hope.

I’m not going to get a yellow glove tattoo because I think that would look dumb. (Okay, but the tattoo I’m really contemplating was drawn by my niece, and it’s hilarious, and it’s all because my sister really really loves guacamole.) Instead, I will share this poem, and hope that those of you who know my sister will see her in it, and so will those of you who don’t.

Short Stuff:

• This is a prose poem, meaning there are no imposed line breaks.
• Shihab Nye is also a songwriter, novelist, and editor. Her anthology, This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from around the World, is one of my favorites—especially for teachers. It’s geared toward younger readers, but is in no way patronizing.

Topics

Resilience, hope,growing up,family

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Yellow Glove

What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments?

I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV. When the new gloves appeared one Christmas, tucked in soft tissue, I heard it trailing me: Don’t lose the yellow gloves.

I was small, there was too much to remember. One day, waving at a stream—the ice had cracked, winter chipping down, soon we would sail boats and roll into ditches—I let a glove go. Into the stream, sucked under the street. Since when did streets have mouths? I walked home on a desperate road. Gloves cost money. We didn’t have much. I would tell no one. I would wear the yellow glove that was left and keep the other hand in a pocket. I knew my mother’s eyes had tears they had not cried yet, I didn’t want to be the one to make them flow. It was the prayer I spoke secretly, folding socks, lining up donkeys in windowsills. To be good, a promise made to the roaches who scouted my closet at night. If you don’t get in my bed, I will be good. And they listened. I had a lot to fulfill.

The months rolled down like towels out of a machine. I sang and drew and fattened the cat. Don’t scream, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fight—you could hear it anywhere. A pebble could show you how to be smooth, tell the truth. A field could show how to sleep without walls. A stream could remember how to drift and change—next June I was stirring the stream like a soup, telling my brother dinner would be ready if he’d only hurry up with the bread, when I saw it. The yellow glove draped on a twig. A muddy survivor. A quiet flag.

Where had it been in the three gone months? I could wash it, fold it in my winter drawer with its sister, no one in that world would ever know. There were miracles on Harvey Street. Children walked home in yellow light. Trees were reborn and gloves traveled far, but returned. A thousand miles later, what can a yellow glove mean in a world of bankbooks and stereos?

Part of the difference between floating and going down.

—Naomi Shihab Nye