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My Mother Is a Sewing Machine

Most Sunday afternoons you can find me at my mother's, sitting around her dining room table that is much too big for the small breakfast nook in her apartment. We usually spend a few hours every Sunday sewing together. It's a cozy Sunday and quiet Sunday afternoon, the loudest noises coming from the steady whir of our sewing machines. We have to slide and shuffle around one another to use the ironing board or get a re-fill of unsweet tea (something I learned to love because of my mother).

I usually sew a few sets of cloth napkins for my etsy shop while my mother is busy hemming a pair of pants for one of her sisters, moving a button for someone at work, or sewing up a hole in someone's favorite sweater. When she isn't working on those small projects for other people, my mom is learning how to quilt. This year, she decided that she wanted to learn how to quilt. She finished her first quilt that was covered in daisies in time for Aunt Bobbie's birthday. By mid April, her second quilt was done.



Growing up, I wasn't able to appreciate my mother for everything that she is, and it's pretty ironic why. When I was a kid, my parents were these larger than life, superhuman pillars of strength. There was no safer place to be than in their arms or on their laps. But as I grew up, I experienced these devastating moments where that strength was lost, and suddenly I realized that my world might not be as secure as I thought. I realized that my parents were just as human, just as scared, and just as fragile as me. It's unfortunate that this seems to happen when we are at our most vulnerable and volatile: as teenagers.

But recently I've discovered that what has replaced my fear and disappointment of my parents' humanness is so much better. In discovering that my parents are people, normal people with the same emotions, urges, and fears as everyone else, they actually gain their superhuman status back. I realize that they were able to create a household so safe, so nurturing without the superhuman strength I thought they had. It amazes me that normal people could make such superhuman sacrifices that they made for my brother and me. Respect and awe replaces the fantastic and unrealistic, and I realize that my parents are, in fact, superheroes.

My mother is funny, kind, and warm. I've never seen her be rude to anyone soliciting anything; vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, religion, it didn't matter. My mom is almost always patient, and she follows the Golden Rule even when she shouldn't. It makes me happy to realize that I laugh a lot like my mother and I've noticed since I've started sewing with her that my hands are almost identical to hers. My mother also has the prettiest skin. She got a sample of of Oil of Olay in the mail when she was 25 years old, and she has used it every day since then. It's no surprise that if you open my medicine cabinet (which you shouldn't because that makes you nosey...and creepy) you would find a bottle of Oil of Olay. And when I put it on every morning, I think about my mother.

It makes sense that I've started sewing with my mother, and that she has taught me how to sew. In a way, that's what my mother has always been to me: a sewing machine. My mother has been the stitches that have held me together for the past 27 years. When I was a kid she was there for every stumble, fall, or fever ready to bandage me up and send me on my way again. When I got older and the "sticks and stones" adage proved to be completely backwards, my mom helped me put me back together after heartbreaks from friends or boys. Now that I'm a (quasi) adult, my mom still helps me hold myself together when I experience disappointment at work, with graduate school rejection letters, or with bigger, older boys. She's there to help me keep myself together when I let my emotions get the best of me, and I say something that I shouldn't...and then beat myself up about it for days. My mother is there to sew up a snag, move a hem, or adjust a button if I grow...or shrink. Just like she does for everyone else on those sewing Sunday afternoons.

Happy Mother's Day Mom.

(and just because you said "these better not end up on the internet")...

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