I have a dear friend who’s old dog is reaching the end of her story. This gentlemen lost his wife three years ago. A lot of of the love he had no place for after his wife died, he has poured into this sweet little dog. Like many old animals, Maya has slowed down considerably. Where she used to run joyfully after her ball, she now sits and looks longingly after it if you toss it, but doesn’t make any effort to get up and bring it back to you. Still, she loves to be in the yard. I watch her from my window when she’s visiting. There’s something so joyful in the way she raises that old snout and breathes deeply the fresh air. Sitting quietly, her head turns from one side to the other as she surveys her “land” and she seems to take pleasure in simply being outside shrouded in nature. When we are entrusted with an animal’s well being, it is up to us to make the to relieve them from pain should it become necessary, because they can’t do it for themselves. So many times I have been asked to make the choice to have to say goodbye to an old furry friend. It never gets any easier. Fortunately Maya has no pain according to the vet so she will live out her life well loved and cared for until it is time for her to go. To my mind, pets are members of the family. I have said many times Boo, the Queen of Cats, can be credited with getting me through the past two and a half years. Had I had to face Rick’s death and this isolation without her companionship it would have proved far more difficult. There isn’t a day I don’t look at that much loved furry face and feel overwhelming thanks for her presence in my life.
Loss is part of life. This year has brought more than the usual share of loss for so many people it seems. I remember thinking last year I could not wait for 2020. 2019 was a year marked by a lot of hard edges. I can hear my grandmother’s voice in my ear, “Susan, never wish your life away”, but 2019 asked a lot. Who knew 2020 was going to show up and prove to be a far more tumultuous and difficult year? Makes 2019 look like a walk in the park.
I am thankful I made it through with the virus and didn’t end up in the hospital. Finally, Even more thankful that after entering my third week of confinement I am beginning to feel like my old self. Not fully mended yet but beginning to sense it is around the next bend in the road. The virus is still lingering in my body according to a recent second test, also positive. Apparently this is not uncommon. I have been given the green light to actually return to the general population the middle of next week provided all my symptoms have abated. This news comes just in time for California to begin a sort of state-wide lock down to get a handle on the over populated hospital wards due to Covid spread. So, I can go out, but, I can’t go out. Rather than hop in the pity pot and stew for a while, I am going to wrap myself around the glorious feeling of finding my energy once again and my regained sense of taste and smell and do something to keep myself busy in my little house with Miss Boo, the Queen of Cats. This too will pass, will be my mantra, and I have promised myself if I feel despair knocking at my door, I will not answer.
In an effort to keep the blues at bay, I have dusted off my sewing machine and begun to work on some projects. I love to sew, it’s cathartic for me. Actually enjoying working with fabrics really didn’t start for me until my early thirties. Up until then, I had not had much success with sewing. The first time I used a sewing machine was in Home Economics in eighth grade. Home Economics, for those of you scratching your heads, was a required subject in middle school back in the stone age. Young women of that time were being groomed to become wives and mothers, not CEO’s of large high-tech companies. Household skills were deemed necessary to sink the hook in your mate of choice. Thankfully, I didn’t lean totally on this Cinderella concept. I enrolled in a typing class before I graduated from high school. This, it would turn out, would be a decision that would save my bacon when finding myself a single mother with two small children a few years down the road. Home Ec, as we called it, was not my favorite class. I did not endear myself to my classmates when in the first semester tasked with making cinnamon toast (not exactly rocket science) I accidentally grabbed the jar containing salt not sugar. This would have been chocked up to a stupid mistake but for the fact in order to get a grade we had to eat what we produced. Needless to say this did not sit well for the other young ladies in my group. Sorry.
From cooking we moved on to sewing. My mother, God love her, couldn’t sew on a button if the fate of the world hung on her doing so correctly. Mum was a bit of a debutante growing up, and had people to do such things. Up until a scant few years ago if she lost a button or dropped part of a hem the item was put in a pile with a note reading “Save for Susie” pinned to it to await my next visit. So, going into sewing class I knew absolutely not one thing about how a sewing machine worked or any clue whatsoever about choosing fabrics or reading a pattern. My best friend who next to me in class was usually my partner in crime. If possible, she knew even less about how to thread a needle. Between the two of us, we were sort of the precursors to Dumb and Dumber, ladies edition. Similar to having to eat what we cooked, we were giving the assignment of making a garment then wearing it to school to earn our grade. Isn’t life humiliating enough at thirteen, without being charged with having to do something like that? I think so, I really do.
The next weekend, my mother took my friend and I to the fabric store to pick out patterns and fabric for our assignment. Now, this would be tantamount to sending a chimp to the NASA command center to manage a rocket launch. I decided to make a skirt. I’m sure this decision was predicated on the fact a skirt was equal to half a dress so would be less work and had a relatively low degree of difficulty. A skirt would consist of a waistband, a zipper and the skirt itself. Easy peasy. Right. I got the pattern home, opened it up, and laid the pieces out on the floor. Had the instructions been written in Ancient Sanskrit they couldn’t have been more confusing. Words like “selvage”, “understitch” and “bias” jumped off the page with no explanation offered. Diligently, I pinned the pattern pieces to the fabric, cut them out, and took the lot back to school the day my next class was scheduled. Having no idea there were different types of fabrics, one better suited than another, I chose a stretchy material. True to it’s description, it twisted and stretched in every direction like an avid marathon runner before a big race. By the time I got done sewing the skirt, put in the zipper, and attached the waistband, it looked like I had sewn tennis balls underneath it. Puckers and pouches abounded. Sigh. My mother, always my biggest fan, said it looked as if I’d bought it off the rack. Go, Mom. It’s like the old Egyptian saying, “in his mother’s eye, the monkey is a gazelle”. Knowing I had to wear it to school, I seriously considered sewing a matching bag to pull over my head. I showed up at school the day we were to show our final product, skirt on, and head down. About mid-morning, with my Home Ec class not scheduled until after lunch, I had already endured enough humiliation to fill the humble pie of my young life to the brim. Just before lunch, the unevenly placed stitching on the waistband gave way and my skirt, waving the white flag of defeat, dropped to my knees. Life, as they say, was in the toilet during that moment. So memorable was it for my friends, I was still taking some good natured kidding in high school about that incident several years later. Fortunately, I had worn a slip, the only thing rescuing me from total social suicide. Still, I had to go to the Home Ec class and be sewn into my skirt so I could finish the day. That being said, the resulting grade did not do much to enhance my GPA.
After that debacle, I retired my foot pedal until I was given a sewing machine in my twenties by a friend who had purchased a new one. I didn’t have the heart to tell her no, so excited was she to be sharing something she so enjoyed with me. Yawn. For the first year, the machine sat lonely and abandoned on the closet shelf in my spare room. Around the holidays, my daughter, a third grader at the time, came home to excitedly tell me she was going to be a Cossack in a Christmas pageant at her school. Yay!! A newletter sent home to the parents of participants in the pageant mentioned parents were expected to either sew or have sewn the costumes their offspring were to be wearing. Swell. I felt I leaned more toward the “have sewn” group, but since money wasn’t exactly sprouting out of a tree in the back yard, I decided I’d better attempt to create something myself. Once again, I immersed myself in the strange and wonderful world of patterns, but this time I showed up to the battle armed with The Simplicity Learn to Sew Book. Truthfully, looking back most of the things I’ve learned to do well in my life have either came from trial and error by actually doing whatever it is I set out to do, or getting a book and going about teaching myself. I am probably one of the more tenacious humans on earth, so like a dog with a bone I will keep gnawing at it until I get to the marrow.
After much swearing and a number of failed attempts, one resulting in a shredded Cossack vest resting in a shallow grave in the art room trash can, I finally managed to make a costume my little girl could be proud of. Secretly, I was rather proud of it myself. My mom sat in the audience the night of the pageant and when she saw the costume she leaned over and whispered, “looks like you bought it off the rack”. Go, Mom.
I am not fond of the word can’t. Used to tell my kids there is no such thing as can’t, but rather “won’t” or “I don’t want to”. Most probably most things you really apply yourself to do, can be done. Not all of course, I’ve had some epic failures. Let’s face it, you can’t fail if you never try at all.
So I shall persevere today and remind myself how much I like to sit at machine creating lovely things with fabric. Maybe you can rekindle a romance with something you used to love during this time of isolation? Make it a great and productive day.
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