My mother was only 18 in 1943 when she designed, sewed, and embroidered five nightdresses that would become the first pieces in her hope chest…She could have become so many things. But she chose to become a wife and mother, a seamstress, an immigrant, an embroider of lives...She was a lover of poetry and song and beauty and, in my eyes, that essence is captured in this handmade garment of her youth.