Clothes: Coat Of Many Colors

Dolly Parton: Coat Of Many Colors

[purchase]

I've always admired Dolly Parton. This song in particular gets to the core of how great a songwriter she is, because it's beautiful, simple, and tells a story, and not just any story, but a very personal story that is also inspirational.

My mother always looks a bit misty-eyed when this song is on. Being a farmer's daughter herself, and being the girl wearing the flour sack dress to school and never feeling like she fit in because of it, and now looking back on it she remembers how hard her parents worked to feed and clothe her and her many siblings, she feels sad she never appreciated when she had it. Now she appreciates the difference, the homemade cookies in her lunchbox instead of the store bought ones, the time in the kitchen with her mother, the cherry picking with her sisters, they are all now experiences that she cherishes and feels blessed to have had instead of feeling like she wishes she were like the other girls as she did back then. Dolly puts her feelings into words and we see just how important and proud an article of clothing can make us.