I Can Do This!!!

Years ago, when I was in high school, my dad taught me to sew, not my mom, who struggled to sew on a button, but my dad, who stood over you to make sure each seam was perfectly straight or tear it out and start again. He used to have an upholstery business and was one tough boss with his seamstresses. But when they finally quit him, and they all did, they were far better at sewing than when they started. He only had one employee who stuck with him through thick and thin. Truth be known, she did quit several times. That was my Aunt Dorothy, his sister.

The first machine he bought for me was a Singer sewing machine, one-directional and no-frills. I hear those are worth a fortune today… sigh. I sewed for hours, making all of my own clothes, and spent more time tearing out than sewing. I was driven to win. After a few years, there was a new sewing machine under the tree.

In the seventies, after I was married, I sewed for an income. We traveled with racehorses across the country. I sewed jockey silks for the riders and saddle blankets that went under the racing saddle displaying the stable the horse belonged to.

As time went on, I sewed clothes for myself and my girls. I mastered men’s dress shirts. I replaced all the curtains in the house with high-end pleated ones, with a few bloodstains from all the pinning and pleating. I sewed a man’s suit once and several denim jackets. I even made some of my own patterns. I taught all my kids to sew, though they didn’t have a passion for it and gave it up.

The point I was getting at was that I was accomplished.

Today, I had to repair a torn hem on a bedspread. Easy-peasy! I’m home alone, and my husband forgot to retrieve my sewing machine from the basement storage. I decided not to wait for him. I ran down the two flights of stairs to the laundry room, where the machine was stored.

I had to remove layers of boxes, bags, CDs, candles, and wreaths, but I finally found it sitting on the back of the shelf. I scooted it forward to the edge. I pulled up the handle, and umph… my faithful Bernina needed to go on a diet. I’m sure the machine weighed about twelve pounds when I was younger, tossing bales of hay for the horses. Today it weighed, I kid you not, seventy-five pounds. I think that since we moved to Omaha, it absorbed a lot of humidity, and we all know what happens when you retain water. You get heavier.

I managed to drag it up the stairs. It was only two flights down, but six flights back up. I set it on the table. I looked at it, and it looked back. “Okay, I can do this,” I said. I had forgotten how to thread it. Closed my eyes and let my fingers do it from memory. Then the bobbin. As I was placing it in the bobbin holder, it fell back out before it clicked into place. Of course, it rolled all the way across the floor, unwinding itself. Back at the machine, threaded, bobbin in place, ready to thread the needle. Uh oh.

Somehow, probably due to the humidity, the hole in the needle had shrunk. After a few tries and about to give up, the thread found its way through the eye of the needle.

I actually enjoyed the sound and the feeling of sewing again. It brought back memories of my youth. I stood to fold the bedspread that I had repaired, but my body quickly told me it was no longer young and that I should’ve waited for my husband… my back does protest!!