Certain days have a way...
Feb. 28th, 2004 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavandarlizard2...Of just sneaking up on you.
My mother died three years ago today. Being a great believer in the power of denial, I still have most of her stuff in storage. Today the Dragonette and I went to the storage locker and ruthlessly chummed 8 boxes of fabric, clothing and linens for the Salvation Army. In the process, I found patterns, fabric and half-finished clothes that she was working on.
My mother was a seamstress; she sewed. She sewed *everything*. She made my clothes, and she made clothes for the Dragonette when he was little. When he was just starting to walk, she turned a pair of his father's old cammies into the cutest damn pair of shortalls you ever saw, years before camouflage became the trendoid fashion.
She made my wedding dress. She worked for some of the biggest department stores, doing alterations, back in the days when a woman could get her clothes altered to really fit. She could and did make wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, men's suits, lingerie and layettes.
She made gloves and hats, quilts and curtains, slipcovers and shrouds.
She learned to sew when she was four years old, helping her grandmother make bloomers. In her 8th grade home economics class, the teacher sat in the back of the room with a book, while my mother taught the class. She went to a costume design school in Seattle, and then joined the Navy, where she was in charge of the women's uniforms at the tailor shop. After that, she went to schools in San Francisco to learn hatmaking, tailoring and alterations.
She never met a pattern she couldn't finesse, a fabric she couldn't tame. She worked on $90-a-yard silk brocade and 39-cent-a-yard muslin.
The Dragonette is learning to sew because his grandmother sewed.
And I'm gonna have to take it up again, if I ever want to wear the half-finished things hanging in that closet.
I wore my art coat today for the first time in three years.
Thanks Mom; we miss you.
My mother died three years ago today. Being a great believer in the power of denial, I still have most of her stuff in storage. Today the Dragonette and I went to the storage locker and ruthlessly chummed 8 boxes of fabric, clothing and linens for the Salvation Army. In the process, I found patterns, fabric and half-finished clothes that she was working on.
My mother was a seamstress; she sewed. She sewed *everything*. She made my clothes, and she made clothes for the Dragonette when he was little. When he was just starting to walk, she turned a pair of his father's old cammies into the cutest damn pair of shortalls you ever saw, years before camouflage became the trendoid fashion.
She made my wedding dress. She worked for some of the biggest department stores, doing alterations, back in the days when a woman could get her clothes altered to really fit. She could and did make wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, men's suits, lingerie and layettes.
She made gloves and hats, quilts and curtains, slipcovers and shrouds.
She learned to sew when she was four years old, helping her grandmother make bloomers. In her 8th grade home economics class, the teacher sat in the back of the room with a book, while my mother taught the class. She went to a costume design school in Seattle, and then joined the Navy, where she was in charge of the women's uniforms at the tailor shop. After that, she went to schools in San Francisco to learn hatmaking, tailoring and alterations.
She never met a pattern she couldn't finesse, a fabric she couldn't tame. She worked on $90-a-yard silk brocade and 39-cent-a-yard muslin.
The Dragonette is learning to sew because his grandmother sewed.
And I'm gonna have to take it up again, if I ever want to wear the half-finished things hanging in that closet.
I wore my art coat today for the first time in three years.
Thanks Mom; we miss you.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 03:34 pm (UTC)Of course, I have since learned that driving your adult children crazy is in the Mom Contract; the ultra fine print at the bottom of page 4973...
no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 08:42 pm (UTC)Mine only allowed hot fudge sundaes and Tylenol...
Oh. Wait. I see the problem. You have a girl; I have a boy. *patpat* You're definitely entitled to the valium.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-01 04:42 am (UTC)You know what's going to happen, don't you? I'm going to get that stomach flu from hubby and strep from daughter... at the same time! O.O
no subject
Date: 2004-03-01 06:10 am (UTC)Move those cootie-carriers to the garage!
CoQ10!!!
no subject
Date: 2004-03-01 09:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-01 06:08 am (UTC)That line about "Wait till you have children of your own;" it's not a promise, it's a threat.
A hug for the matriarchs is a good thing; where would the world be without them?
(Answer: up to our eyeballs - literally - in crap.)