A Stitch in Time

When I was very young -- probably between about four and six years old -- my mother had a cabinet-mounted sewing machine that had a place in our wide upper hallway. It sat in front of a window, so she could look out on the hilly front yard while sewing. I have a lot of vivid memories associated with those eight square feet of my childhood house.

The drawers of the cabinet had a peculiar smell. Not incense or soap or spices or pot pourri or any other single thing meant to lend fragrance. It was a scent that seemed to be part of the wood itself -- a little spicy, a touch earthy, mixed with the fainter hints of warm cotton thread and new zippers. I used to love to explore the pleasant jumble of buttons and spools, sewing machine feet and scissors, measuring tapes and pins, relishing the smell, feeling the gloss of a button or the stud of a tiny metal snap beneath my finger.

There was a giant old milk can--of the sort used in the 19th century to transport milk in bulk by train from farm to city--that sat in the hallway corner, filled with scraps of fabric left over from various projects. Remnants large enough to make something new were kept in the linen closet. The can was reserved for tiny bits. A border of blue, a random polygon of white sprigged with rosebuds, a bit of ruffle leftover from trimming a green dotted-swiss curtain. The inside of this can had its own particular smell too -- a mix of metal and wool, cotton and the memory of milk. Plunging my arms into the dark depths of the scrap can, there was no telling what I would find, though there was some guarantee that whatever it was would be a treasure on the perfect scale for making a new skirt for a doll.

My strongest memory, though, of this sunny length of hallway is "helping" my mother sew. I used to sit behind her on her chair, my legs draped on either side of her body, dangling. I couldn't see what she was doing, but I could pretend that I was sewing too. Pressed against the warm of her back, I participated in the creative process the best way I knew how.

Today, as I was sewing patches into more of Son's pant knees, Daughter wandered into the room, climbed up into my chair, and positioned herself behind me. "Please don't jiggle Mama while she's sewing," I said, perhaps a little too strongly, "I have a dangerous needle here, and someone could get hurt."

She peered over my shoulder, nodding knowingly, and pointing at the pin cushion attached to the side of the sewing machine, "Yots and yots of dang'rous needles," she confirmed.

"Please sit down," I insisted. (My chair is a swiveling office chair, nicely cushioned, but susceptible to her every movement, especially when I have only one foot to anchor it still and the other is occupied with the machine's foot pedal.)

"But," she said, matter-of-factly, "then I can't see."

And immediately, I was three years old myself. Sitting behind my own mother, vicariously sewing a garment I could neither touch nor see.

I realize as I write this that Daughter, too, loves to rifle through the drawers of my sewing machine cabinet -- the very same cabinet that was once my mother's. She plays with the buttons, identifies the thread colors, runs her chubby fingers over the silky ribbons. She demands to know what a button-hole foot is for. She knows that the top drawer is off-limits, filled as it is with all the "dang'rous" things.

As I sew, Daughter peers at the running machine, fascinated and appropriately a little afraid of its noise and speed. I can feel her hands working at my back. It is distracting, a little annoying, to be frank, because it makes me wiggly and hampers my work.

But is is also tremendously sweet. My daughter, like my son, has the family drive to create. But where he is all about the art supplies, she seems to gravitate to the tactile, the three dimensional. The smells and sounds and possibilities that exist in a pile of fabric and a sewing machine may be difficult to imagine for an adult who does not sew. But to a child, they are magical.

It's nice to be reminded to recognize the inspiration from time to time.