On a recent afternoon, I opened up my sewing machine to
repair my husband’s jeans. I noticed immediately that the stitching didn’t look
right. Pulling out my well-worn instruction manual for the Model 1351 Zigzag
Sewing Machine, I flipped through the pages to find the trouble-shooting guide.
There, on the memo page, were the measurements of my daughters, my son, my sister,
and me. The writing is the recognizable script of my mother, recording our
sizes as they were the last time she held this manual in her hands in 1980.
Like a freeze-frame from a movie, I remembered the sight of
my mother hunched low over her sewing machine as she deftly maneuvering fabrics
under the needle, generating clothing for my sister and me.
For all of my childhood, my mother owned a sewing machine. Her
first was a Christmas present from my dad. Purchased in the 1950’s, it was made
of steel and finished in bright blue with chrome trim. It folded down neatly
into a mahogany cabinet with Chippendale-style pull on the front door. Since
our ranch-style home had no rooms to spare for only sewing, her sewing machine substituted
as decorative surface in our living room usually with a lamp or flower
arrangement of seasonal kind on top of its closed lid.
I don’t recall Mom ever telling me who taught her to sew. Her
mother died when she was very young. Her father abandoned her and her two
younger brothers. Their grandmother raised them. Mom grew up industrial
strength. As poor farmers deep in the south, they struggled for day to day
existence. Perhaps my great-grandmother shared her skills with her skinny
little granddaughter. I am confident my mother learned more from necessity than
for the sake of a hobby.
