My Mother's Sewing Machine

 

It was in the house before I was born, bought sometime in the mid nineteen forties. Mum spent hours and hours at that machine making most of the clothes for the two of us until I moved out on my own. I loved to go with her each fall to pick out fabric for blouses. I liked all the different colours and the fact that my clothes were different from anyone else's. There were turquoise fabrics, rusty brown ones and forest green ones. Some were paisley and some had small flowers on them. Sometimes we bought striped material and sometimes I wore checks.

Mum would bring the material home and the first thing she did was to wash it. Once it was dry she would pull a thread out to determine the true grain of the fabric. I don't know whether grain is the correct word or whether I have transferred that from my passion for working in wood, but I know that orienting a pattern properly on the fabric was very important. She would then lay out the fabric on the dining room table and place the pattern pieces in such a way that she could get the most out of the fabric. Next she took the tissue paper pattern out of its envelope and, if it was a new pattern she trimmed the patten pieces down to the lines being careful to cut around the notches so she could later mate pieces to be pinned and sewn. Sometimes if the patterns were really wrinkled, she ironed them to flatten them out.

When she was satisfied with how she had laid out the pieces she pinned them to the fabric using steel dressmaker's pins and then cut them out. The next step was to put the pieces in the order in which she would sew them and do any basting that was needed. She was pretty quick with a needle and thread. I remember she was always slightly cross that in every single project she had to pull out a seam. Even though she had sewn most of her life she never got to the point she thought she should be where a garment went together flawlessly.Many nights after I went to bed I could hear the sound of her machine humming away in the room across the hall from my bedroom.

I think she would liked to have passed on her love of sewing to me but she never complained when I professed to hate Home Economics, the subject in which she earned her university degree, and grumbled that it was unfair that girls couldn't take shop.

I did do some sewing. It was hard to escape that in the compulsory Home Economics classes of the day and Mum was a big support. She helped me with my projects. She never sewed anything for me but she gave me the benefit of her years of experience showing me an easier way to tie a knot in the end of a thread or how to thread the sewing machine correctly. She gave me tips for getting the seams straight and told me about the importance of basting and pressing as I went along. I sewed what I had to sew and happily gave it up as soon as I could.

Mum's sewing machine remained in her house until she sold the house when she was in her early nineties. I told her I wanted it, although I had no reason to since I did everything I could to avoid sewing. Besides I already had a portable machine willed to me by my grandmother. It was a more modern one than my mother's. Somehow I felt I needed to take care of her machine as she had taken care of it all her life.

When my mother died a few months short of her ninety fourth birthday I held onto the machine. Many things that had been important to her during her life were not important to me and she understood that. She cleared out all of her silver and china because I wasn't interested in them. Why then did I hold onto the sewing machine which really didn't interest me either? Maybe if was because I respected all the hours she had spent making clothes for me. Maybe it was a symbol of her consummate skill or maybe it was the object, more than any other, which made her who she was.

I know that once we let go of our possessions we cannot expect anyone else to treasure them the way we did and yet, I wanted someone to take the machine and appreciate it in a way that my mother did and I did not. So, it stayed in our basement. I made a few attempts to see if anyone wanted it and even decided not to give it away to someone who wanted it because I didn't think she would take proper care of it. I looked on kijiji a few times for similar machines and it seemed they were a dime a dozen. Nobody was going to want this old machine and yet I could not part with it.

One day I read a Facebook post from a friend requesting sewing machines for an NGO that works with women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their mandate is to educate children and to teach women skills and advance them micro-credit so they can support their families. I called the number and and the founder of the organization and her husband arrived the next day to collect the machine.

  

When we brought it out to the car her face lit up. She told me they loved to get older machines like this one because they were sturdy and simple to maintain. She told me she could tell it was in excellent shape. I gave her all the accessories and the manual which Mum carefully kept with the machine. We had to bungie the trunk down because it wouldn't close.

As the couple drove away I felt at peace that the old machine had finally found a dignified home. My mother was a teacher and, to me, it is fitting that the machine should make the trip to Congo to be used by some women I will never meet. I think Mum would have been pleased that her cherished machine went to a place where it could help make the lives of some women and children just a little bit better.

When I bought my piano the person who sold it to me said, “Sometimes I think it is our function to hold onto something until the right person comes along to accept it from us.” I think she was right.

Empathy for John Smith

The rains have stopped and people affected by the floods in Calgary and Southern Alberta are putting their lives back together as best they can. Evacuation orders have been lifted and many are back in their homes. The main theme of these floods has been people helping people and, for once, positive stories makes the news regularly. I have done very little to help, other than staying off the roads and trying to conserve water. I look forward to doing my laundry and having showers more frequently when the state of emergency is lifted. We will also attend a benefit concert tomorrow. It's not much but it's better than being in the way or being, as some people have, a “Nenshi noun.” Google that one. It's a good story.

My empathy for “John Smith” is for all whom I know and don't know who have lost so much in the flood and for all those who have worked tirelessly to help in whatever way they could.

My empathy for “John Smith” is also for a much more mundane reason: his name. Beginning in December of last year I began receiving some rather puzzling emails. The first emails that showed up in my inbox were newsy and interesting describing a holiday in Australia. I know a lot of people and, although I couldn't place the names, I thought we must have met the couple on one of our cycling or hiking trips. I read the emails with interest, still not able to figure out exactly who these people were.

I got an email about a property someone wanted to buy and thought it must be some kind of Google aberration, so I deleted it. Next I got a lunch invitation to a restaurant that certainly isn't in Calgary. I wrote the sender back saying that I would love to come to lunch but since I lived in a different city, I was pretty sure I wasn't the intended recipient of the invitation. I also expressed the hope that the intended recipient wouldn't miss a lunch date because I got the invitation instead.

Next, I received an email from a woman undergoing chemotherapy. The tone of the email was friendly and familiar but I couldn't place the name. I emailed back saying that if I knew her I was drawing a blank and asked her for some context. I got another email saying that a previous email had somehow been sent to another Marian Hood and giving me further updates on the state of her health. I wrote back, wished her well and again said I was not the person she wanted. The line from Star Wars, “These aren't the droids you're looking for.... Move along,” began marching through my head.

I figured out that the problem must be with my gmail account. I hardly ever give out my gmail address because even people who know me well sometimes misspell my first name. Then I got an email from a church in Washington. I emailed the sender saying that if I knew the email address of the person they wanted I'd gladly save them a phone call by passing it along. I got a very polite, somewhat startled, reply asking me to delete the previous message. No problem.

Finally ( I'm a bit slow sometimes) I googled my name. I expected to find a couple of references to articles I have written and not much else. This time the first hit was for Marian Hood, a realtor in Washington. The site included her business email. I emailed her the story. I think she was as surprised as I was that there are two of us who spell our names the same unusual way. She promised she would do what she could to straighten out things at her end and asked that I forward any emails I received in error to her. So far I haven't received any more of her mail.

The experience is odd for me in a couple of ways. I can count on the fingers of both hands the number of people named “Marion” I have met. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of “Marian's” I have met who spell their names the same way I do. I'm simply not used to sharing my name with anyone. I imagine for John Smith being mistaken for someone else is a tiresome reality.

The second thing that struck me is that, for a time, I felt part of a a specific network of friends who tell each other of their travels, reach out to each other for support, and plan lunch dates. I am grateful for the photos of Australia and the lunch invitation even though they weren't meant for me. This is a circle of good friends doing what good friends do for each other. Somehow I'm glad this woman who shares my name is part of such a circle even as I am part of one in a different country. It is circles of friends like this who come together as a community to offer their homes to flood victims, who don rubber boots to help muck out basements. It is circles of friends who find ways in which they can help others and, in so doing, give to their communities kind and caring faces.

Calgary Flood

As I sit here dry and warm, the rain drums on the skylight in the ceiling of my study. Normally this is a soothing sound. Today it serves to remind me of the 100,000 Calgarians who have been evacuated from their homes because the Bow and the Elbow rivers are in full flood. There are helicopter shots on the TV networks and Facebook and Twitter are full of photos of devastation. Many people have asked how they can help and Mayor Nenshi has requested that we simply stay home and leave the streets which are not flooded to emergency vehicles. Tempting as it is to go out and do something or just to look, we are staying put.

We are lucky. Our foundation was patched last year in the course of our basement renovation and the drainage from next to the house was improved. We live on a hill, not the highest in the city, but quite far up from the river. So far, we are okay.

We talked to my father-in-law this morning and he said there has been nothing like this in his lifetime. There certainly has been nothing like it in mine. It is a strange surreal experience to see video images of the pathways where I trained for so many races now completely under water. Friends who just moved to Bowness in the last week or so have had to evacuate their new home which is now flooded, and, although the Bow has supposedly crested, it continues to rain. One Facebook post announced that the water had reached row 14 in the Saddle Dome in Stampede Park.

The route my walking buddy and I take on Mondays includes walking over the top of the Glenmore dam on the Elbow River. Water is now coming over the top of the dam and there is a huge lake behind the dam. I do not know this city in which I was born and raised.

All this water reminds me that, although we can do marvellous things with our technology and our engineering, we are no match for the sheer power of the natural world. It's easy to forget that. I am shocked by the devastation but also humbled by the realization that people in all parts of the world experience this sort of thing regularly. And so, as I listen to the rain I will stay inside and be grateful to those who are working for the good of the city, for those who have done without sleep for so many hours so they can pluck people from their homes, for the employees who pump water from the basement of the water treatment plant so our drinking water is not compromised. We human beings can be incredibly good to each other and one of the results of a situation like this is that it brings out that good.

The Right Way is the Way that Works

One of the first times I attended a Freefall workshop was right after a day of cycling in the mountains. Richard was going to drop me off at the workshop and he was giving a ride home to another cyclist. The other cyclist seemed a bit concerned that I was willingly walking into some kind of cult. Then I didn't know what to expect. Now I do but that doesn't seem to help me explain what goes on in a way that someone not involved in the workshop will understand.

I don't think I'm often at a loss for words but when people ask me questions about the workshop and I try to answer them I know that what is in their minds isn't even close to what I experience when bunch of writers get together to focus solely on the process of writing and listening to each other's work. A common question is, “What do you write about?” Seems like a straightforward question but it's hard to answer. The general answer is, “anything that comes up.” Sometimes I have an inkling of what I'm going to write about when I go to bed. (We always write in the morning.) Sometimes I'm thinking about a dream I had when I sit down at my computer. Sometimes I have no clue what I'm going to write about. When that happens I usually fall back onto my training as a poet and begin by observing and trying to describe my surroundings. Often I find myself taken back in time to something in my family of origin. In the most recent workshop I found myself engaging in a rant at an author whose work made me feel inferior and stupid. Sometimes I sit down thinking about one thing and in a few moments the writing takes off in an entirely different direction.

It's not process whereby I sit down to write a poem or a piece of memoir or a short story although all of those things have come out of it. I admit that, at first, I mistrusted this way of writing having been in many writing courses of one sort or another. There I saw people who sometimes had many pages of writing that seemed to have no form. They were desperately looking for someone to help them make all these words into something, anything, and in those classes the usual suggestions for tweaking abounded. “This image really works. You could take out that part, extend this metaphor. ” Often the owner of the writing would go away looking puzzled. It's not easy to bring together the rush of creative imagination and the form and structure of a particular genre.

Having now experienced the process of Freefall writing as Barbara Turner-Vesselago teaches it and more conventional process taught by many other gifted instructors, I am incredibly grateful for both types of experiences. Freefall has helped me to, “get out of [my] own way,” as Barbara often says. I am also grateful for the years in which my more critical self was developing. All writing experiences give me more tools for my toolbox and the knowledge to pick and choose the best tool for the best job. After I have written a piece I can put it away for a while and then go back to it and identify, to a certain extent, where I can compress the writing and where I need to find more accurate words. Sometimes I can do that better than at other times. In working with hand tools we call it, “workmanship of risk.” Just because I cut a perfect dovetail yesterday there is no guarantee that I will cut a perfect one tomorrow. Sometimes the writing flows effortlessly and has tremendous energy to draw me in. Other times it is stagnant and flat and no matter how hard I search around for something that has more life to it, it remains flat. Perhaps the not-knowing is part of what draws me to woodwork and to writing. I could set up jigs on the machines in the shop to get the same results every time but I find that I quickly lose interest. I'd rather be trying something new even if it doesn't turn out very well in the end.

The only way I will run out of projects to do in the shop is to run out of things I can think of. The only way I can run out of things to write about is to stop thinking, period. If I can think about it I can write about it. Much of what I write will not move beyond the computer screen just as many of the things I make from wood will remain with me because they are too flawed to give to anyone else.

Barbara has written a book which helped me place Freefall in the context of what I already knew about writing. It's a good read, an interesting read if you want to know more about writing.

Writing Without a Parachute

If you're interested in seeing an example of where I am in my work, in part, because of Freefall you can find my first attempt at writing for Kindle Dreaming over Water

Happy writing and happy reading to all of you regardless of which side of the text you currently inhabit.