Sewing, Ancestors and Shame

Today as I was hand-sewing on a small but meaningful project I felt again as if my hands were echoing those of women back through time, not just my mother's and her mother's but women back through centuries, sitting near a window to get the best light. A particular feeling unique to hand-sewing comes over me: I am so glad to be from a line of sewing women. They seem to stay with me while I'm sewing. A long time ago in my life I kept it secret that I sewed. Why? I did a so-called man's work, journalism, and while I stubbornly remained a dignified -- even graceful -- female, focused, venturesome, secure in myself, there was a line drawn. If I mentioned I sewed or loved a cat the men competing with me at that time would see it as a fissure leading to the "real" me who was yearning -- they thought -- to find the right man and wear an apron.

So it was quite a way into life during my 30s -- when I began making almost all the clothing I wore -- that I would say in reply to a compliment on a garment: I made it. I said it quietly. I let them have the astonishment and the emotion.

In childhood our mother made all the clothing we wore, even for us girls our little white cotton slips and all the shirts and pants for the boys. We yearned sometimes for store-bought clothing such as worn by children from another part of town. But even so we had the wit to know that the dresses she made were absolutely beautiful. One of the aunts said much later: Your mother had a fine hand for sewing. And so she did. And yes, some of our most beautiful dresses were made from feed sacks, which weren't marked with X's such as seen in hillbilly movies but were of a fine cotton broadcloth sprigged with flowers. She chose the feed sack -- as many women did then -- for its pattern. The decent companies had their name printed so it came out in the first washing, or put their names only on the tags.

If I were asked to choose from a roomful of designer garments and one of those dresses my mother made for me, it would be no choice. None remain because in that time, clothing had many uses. Sometimes our dresses wore out to beyond mending or we outgrew them. Then they were meant for other things, maybe as scraps so useful in sewing, or as part of a curtain, and eventually as rags.

My mother would not teach me how to sew clothing; she taught her two girls only embroidery. Because she wanted us to be women who did not "have" to sew. In my late 20s I bought a small sewing machine and a book entitled "How to Sew." As I studied it intently and began making starter garments, that's when the women came to me, my mother and the others. I found my hands doing things that it seemed came from a mystery, things not in the book. Often times in sewing I just "know."

The sewing women have always come to me when I am sewing. I reflect on how poor culture has been in denigrating these women, the unknown ones who sewed in cold basements for the royal families, the ones who sewed in hovels, the ones who put away their sewing baskets -- except for embroidery -- when they married "up," the ones who sewed for the women now gone "up," the women in millions of rooms with their favorite needle, or "needles" if they were lucky.

When I worked in the Kress's dime store after my high school days I was assigned for a brief time to the sewing counter, shaped like a long buttonhole with me in the middle. Once I became aware of a very small boy trying to get my attention although his head did not rise above the mahoghany counter. I leaned forward and over. "Can I buy a needle?" he said. I looked around for an adult who would be with him. No one near. In those days you could be absorbed in one part of the store and your children would be safe. Everyone automatically looked after them. Now the little boy held up three pennies, repeated his request and I began to understand. No doubt he had heard his mother ask herself many times, anxiously, "Now where is that needle."

I looked around to make sure no supervisors were near, chose a very good packet of needles, put them into a bag, carefully took his pennies, and counted them into the register. He said Thank You and walked away as if he held gold. When I got my small purse in the back at the end of shift I told the boss I had forgotten something and went back to put the missing amount into the register.

Few things have ever made me happier. From time to time, all my life, I think about that little boy.