We learn to sew

My mom has a new teddy bear that keeps her company. She explained to the nurse how she sewed it including the Daisy patterned hospital gown. But the truth is, my Mom has never sewn. Or has she?

For reasons I will never fully understand, because they are my Mom’s, my parents split right after I was born. I have heard the narrative, mostly from Mom, but it was cloaked in so much guilt that I chose to never pry much. I mostly just reassured her that there was no reason for her to carry that.

But here is what I do know about my early childhood. My mom threaded together a life for us. She worked hard in a tire factory, second shift, arriving home late, covered in black soot. She woke early the next morning to spend the day with us or get us ready for school. She cleaned houses in her spare time as there was no child support coming from my biological father. By the time I was five, Mom had found a new relationship for herself that would also prove good for her two girls. Together, with her new husband, Larry, she made a life that would serve her children well.

She learned to sew. We all learn to sew. We thread together our dreams, relationships, places and things that make our lives.

This reminds me of how Tim and I started our mountain life. We updated our dining room with something more modern to suit our home, replacing the rustic Pottery Barn table. In the replacement process we started thinking, “wouldn’t this old table be great in a mountain home?” Well, we didn’t have a mountain home. So we moved it to the attic. It lived there covered in dust, spider webs were built around it, and other boxes were pushed against it as several years passed.

Somehow that table breathed life into our dream that would put us closer to nature. Sure enough, a few years later we bought land and built that home and indeed, the table was a perfect fit.

This mountain home then became a valued part of our life together. We invested in it financially. And even more so, with sweat. We worked the land, we labored, we planted, we cut, we moved. We learned to sew together the perfect mountain life starting with a table and a dream.

This is what we do. This is how we make it. I don’t think that a fulfilling life just happens. We sew the pieces together. People, places, things, and dreams. Sometimes we have a piece that doesn’t fit, or fit anymore. We may even find something that we don’t know what to do with. We hang onto it for a while before we figure it out. There may be flaws in a piece or weakness in the thread needed to bind. The fabric may thin or become torn. Do we dispose of something that is worn or do we try to fix it?  Can we make something new with the old? We make these choices as we sew and we sew and we sew.

Mom is hanging onto her teddy bear that we now call Daisy. She didn’t sew Daisy, but maybe it represents the life that she pieced together for herself and her girls. And she is just not ready to let it go.