Sewing With Mom

My mother is peering into her sewing machine with a quizzical look on her face. She whispers to me, “Do you know how to thread the needle?”

I had to chuckle. Here was the woman who not only single-handedly sewed three prom gowns for me as a teenager—creations equivalent to the most detailed of wedding gowns, but also sewed everything in my childhood home from upholstery for the furniture, curtains for the windows as well as the most beautiful quilted Gunne Sax outfit I had ever set eyes on—a favorite in my wardrobe for years. I don't think I'm being biased when I write that when it comes to sewing, my mother is not only good at what she does, she is a true artist.

Thankfully, at that moment, my mother wasn’t asking for my advice because of forgetfulness or any lack of clarity. After 25 years of using the same old Necchi machine (an Italian brand, made to last for years--and it did!), she had taken a step up in the world and so had I (thanks to an incredibly generous Mother’s Day gift from my husband when I was pregnant) and we were taking a sewing class together to learn how to use our new-fangled machines.

A feminist in her own right, my mother never begrudged her role as full-time, stay-at-home Mom when I was growing up, but embraced it with a sense of true love. “Homemaker,” she called herself back then with a sense of pride. She didn’t just stay home with her kids, she was a true professional. And like most things she tried, she did it really, really well. She took her role seriously and created for us an amazing home.

It’s funny that I think of my mom in this way since she is now the full-time Executive Director for an innercity mobile meals program in our area, a program she has run for more than 20 years. Again, a master of her trade. Again, working round the clock to get the job done. Again, not asking for special recognition for her efforts or complaining—a role model to me in so many ways. To say nothing of the fact that during those 20 years she has still kept her career as homemaker humming along without a hitch.

I remember the vacuum running in the morning before going to school. My mother used that time to clean the house, before leaving it to go to her "other" job (at Mobile Meals), which would have been enough work for one day for less-energetic people like me and my husband. Then it would be home at night to serve a delicious, customized, healthy meal for a family of six--by customized I mean two vegetarian meals for myself and my younger brother (by our choice), often meat and potatoes for the other four and if the meat du jour was chicken, then something different for my father who was allergic to it at the time. (As I write this, my husband and I have just returned from a night eating out with our son since we were both too tired to cook.)

As I try to juggle my own passions of being present for my son, playing and teaching and enjoying his growth; writing and nurturing the dreams of others; keeping my marriage fun and supportive; as well as my desire for a clean, grounded, happy home in which to do all of this, I frequently find myself marveling at how my mom did it all.

I have a memory of myself in our kitchen when I was about 10. My friend and I are on our haunches, peering into a kitchen cabinet in which bowls are stacked neatly, organized as is my mother’s way. My mom’s favorite mixing bowl, a green one, is teetering as we are shimmying it out to use it for making cookies. Suddenly it slips and crashes to the floor, breaking in two. A sense of deep shame comes over my entire body. My family never had much money and I knew that this particular bowl was valuable in more ways than one.

Just then my mother comes down into the kitchen. Mortified, I explain what happened in a string of blurted excuses. I can feel my friend melting into the linoleum as if she just wants to disappear.

My mother simply says with a smile, “That’s okay. These things happen.” Then she whisks the parts of the bowl away into the trash, directing us to her other favorite one--a yellow one--before she disappears again upstairs.

I still marvel at her calmness. “Didn’t she want to try to glue it?” I wonder, but then realize that my mother, always looking out for our well-being, probably realized that getting shards of china in batter, to say nothing of glue, was probably not a risk worth taking.

“Didn’t she want to holler and yell, and tell us to be more careful?” But then I realize that, always sensitive, she probably didn’t want to embarrass me in front of my friend. Perhaps my mother, ever the teacher, also thought that the two of us taking initiative in the kitchen was more important than any minor mishaps that occurred as we were learning to be independent. Who knows? Maybe it was simply a good day and the truth was that “These things truly do happen.”

All I know is it's a memory I don't forget, most likely because it was one of those rare moments in life when we get complete clarity about something--in this case, my mother's true nature.

And so, it should go without saying that when my mother asked, I was more than honored to be able to show her how to thread the needle on her new-fangled machine.