My Junky Old Sewing Machine

When my parents got divorced my mom sewed little velvet bags to hold crystals and denim shirts with quilt patterns on the back. She sold them on consignment to The Contemporary Craftsman, a tiny boutique of handmaid items in our neighborhood to make ends meet as a newly single mom.

I always watched her sew but I never officially learned. Anyone who’s ever used a sewing machine knows that, though machine-sewing makes the process more efficient and effective, sewing machines are complicated. Threading a sewing machine incorrectly can, at best completely sideline a project and at worst, break the machine. 

When I was a senior in high school I started using my mom’s sewing machine regularly. I hemmed pants, altered shirts, and reconfigured skirts and dresses. I used my mom’s machine (without asking) all the time. Several times I jammed the needle, abandoned the project, and left the sewing machine for my mom to deal with when she went to use it. Each time she’d ask me what happened. I’d confess to using the machine and she’d ask me to please ask for help so that it didn’t happen again. After a few times of Mom lugging her sewing machine down to Sears for repair, she asked me to stop using it.

There were so many reasons why I didn’t just ask my mom for help. I was stubborn and independent. On top of that, I had a complicated relationship with my mom. I thought I was too old for a sewing lesson. I thought I knew what I was doing. Even though my mom sewed some of our clothes when we were little and had made part of her livelihood sewing, I didn’t think she could teach me anything I didn’t already know. 

One weekend when my mom and stepdad were out of town I used her machine. I jammed it again and tried repeatedly to fix it. After multiple failed attempts and still not being able to fix the machine, I asked my sister to drive me to Sears. I found the appliance department and dropped off my mom’s machine. I didn’t know I’d have to leave it indefinitely. 

When my mom returned, she asked where her machine was. I had to confess that it was at Sears waiting for repair. When Mom finally picked up the machine and brought it home she made a proposal, “Laura,” she said, “if you spend some time with me learning how to follow a pattern and sew the pattern with me on my sewing machine, I will buy you your own sewing machine to take to college.”

I agreed right away. In my high school mind, a sewing machine was a major piece of equipment and I was psyched! My sister had a silver silk gypsy skirt that I loved and often borrowed. I told Mom that I wanted to try to replicate that. 

One weekend we went to the fabric store and found a pattern and some silver material (polyester because silk was way too pricey for a first-time project). When we got home Mom brought her sewing machine from the basement up to our dining room table and we started working. First, she showed me how to lay out and cut the pattern. Then how to pin the pattern to the fabric and cut the pieces. And finally, she taught me how to thread the machine, adjust the tension, and manage the pressure foot.

I can’t remember how long it took us to sew the skirt — maybe a few days, maybe weeks — but we finished it. In the end, I didn’t like the skirt. It didn’t hang and flow like my sister’s, but I’d completed a pattern and my mom bought me the sewing machine. And we’d done something together. I’d let her teach me something she knew and it was fun. And it’s a memory that comes back to me every time I sew.

That was thirty-five years ago. I packed my sewing machine in the trunk of my grandmother’s Oldsmobile when I graduated from college and my sister and I drove cross country to start our adult lives. I’ve sewn consistently since then — clothes for my daughter, quilts, hats, aprons, and a million other random projects. I know my machine like an old, trusted friend.

I live three thousand miles away from the Sears that used to fix my mom’s machine when I broke it. But my machine has needed fixing many times over the decades. I’ve taken my machine to get repaired and serviced countless times in my own city. When I go to the shop to pick up my old beater I always look at all of the shiny new machines and wonder if I should upgrade to one of those self-threading numbers. But I never do.

My sewing machine is a part of my history, a vessel that holds memories of my mom being my mom and me being her daughter. I learned to sew on that machine and I never stopped. I’ve taught my own daughter to sew on that machine and maybe one day she’ll teach her daughter to sew.

My mom gifted me with a skill that I’ve used hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Recently, I went to visit her at her snowbird house in Arizona where she has a new sewing machine. She rarely uses it. “It’s too complicated,” she told me, “not like her old one.” 

Slipping Through My Fingers

Yesterday I went to my last school orientation. I have gone to thirteen school orientations — every one since kindergarten. My daughter is a senior in high school now and this hour-long session in her high school auditorium was my last parent orientation. As I left the building I felt nostalgic for the years that I took for granted, all those years when I was a needed player in all of the decisions, collaboration, registration, and management of my daughter’s life. 

One of my favorite songs is Slipping Through My Fingers by ABBA. Sometimes my daughter will play the song on the piano and sing along, smiling as she sneaks glances at me getting choked up by the words. My daughter and I both love the movie Mamma Mia. My favorite scene is when Meryl Streep sings that song to her daughter who’s preparing to get married. “Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning. Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile.” My daughter told me that the ABBA singer who wrote that was moved as he watched his daughter walk off to the school bus. I completely relate to this heart-wrenching moment. As a parent, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of these micro-moments of saying goodbye to childhood.

The days of me managing the minutiae of my daughter’s life are over. She doesn’t need that kind of help anymore. Sometimes I worry that my daughter’s independence means that she is cutting me out of her life. I take it as a personal rejection. But the truth is, she is a lot like me. My daughter is fiercely independent. She always has been. 

Every year my daughter takes on a little bit more responsibility and handles it. For several years now I’ve been less and less involved in the day-to-day operations of her life, not because I want to be, but because she doesn’t need or want me to be.

In a year my daughter will go to a college orientation or maybe embark on a gap year of some sort. She’ll learn how to navigate all of the pieces of whatever that new world entails. She might call and ask me for help, but I doubt it. 

Right now my daughter is applying to college. She’s also juggling three summer jobs and a packed social life. I rarely see her, and when I do I am desperate to know something about her life. What is her top college choice these days? Is she getting enough sleep? How was it saying goodbye to her friend who’s headed off to college? And then there are the things I need her to do — clean her room, call the doctor, email the teacher. The list goes on and on. The questions pile up until I am ready to burst.

I remember myself at that age. I too was fiercely independent. I never shared my thoughts about college, my boyfriend, or my friendship struggles with my mother. I wanted to do it all on my own. When I think back on those days I wonder why I rejected help and support.

 I have a complicated relationship with my mother and I have struggled with trusting her for most of my life. I’m sure that weighed into my need for my deeply clandestine adolescence. But it was also my personality. Even before my teens I was independent and committed to doing things on my own.

It felt good to figure things out, to accomplish things on my own. As I watch my daughter manage her multi-faceted life I can see her feeling a similar satisfaction. Occasionally she’ll send me a screenshot of something she’s proud of — an email correspondence with her high school counselor or a photo of a gap year program she’s thinking about doing. 

Sometimes my daughter and her friends hang out in our kitchen and talk about what’s going on in their world in front of me, every once in a while gracing me with the invitation to give an opinion or reflection. She gives me little glimmers of what she’s up to, tiny snippets like little breadcrumbs leading me towards her through a dark forest with no clear path.

I find myself wanting to smother my daughter with questions whenever I’m around her. Often I dive in before I’ve reflected on how that approach will play out and I end up alienating her, sending her in the complete opposite direction. 

When I have the foresight though, I bring myself back to my seventeen-year-old self. “Think about how you would have wanted your mother to engage with you,” I tell myself.

I close my eyes and imagine what environment would have made me feel like opening up to my mother. Calm. Spacious, yet loving. Unconditional. Accepting. As I sit here in the early morning anticipating the fifteen minutes I’ll have with my daughter in an hour when she wakes up, scarfs some breakfast, and races out the door to her job, I try to embody those characteristics. “Hang back,” I coach myself, “just be curious, but not too interested. Let her just be herself.” 

I sink deeper into our kitchen couch preparing myself to refrain from jumping up and giving my daughter a huge hug when she walks into the room. “Breathe deep and feel her energy before you pounce,” I counsel the panicky mommy bouncing around inside my chest.

Last night I went to a housewarming at a friend’s house. Her daughter is leaving for her second year of college tomorrow. As we stood admiring her more-adult-than-child daughter, my friend said, “This is probably the last summer she’ll come home.” I felt my heart muscle squeeze imagining that reality coming down the pike in my own household.

Sometimes I wish my daughter needed me more. It’s hard to take myself out of the equation. I worry that by giving my daughter distance I’m not doing my job as a mother. But I know that’s more about me than about her. My daughter needs what I needed — a wide open, calm, loving, unconditional, accepting place to land when she needs it. The jury’s out on if I can pull that off this morning. I’m going to try. All I can do is try and keep on trying. 

Sisters are Forever

 

I have two brothers and two sisters. Last week I went on a vacation with all of them and our kids. I. Altogether there were fifteen of us. Some of us brought partners, a few of us didn’t. We stayed in an enormous house by a magical lake. We ate meals together, made s’mores at night by the big fire pit in the backyard, took walks, played games, and simply basked in the presence of each other.

I was the first to arrive at the lake house and chose the most modest bedroom — the only one with a queen-sized bed instead of a king. My partner had been unable to join this trip so I thought it made sense for me to take the smaller bed. It was a lovely, quaint room with floral pastel linens, an antique dresser, and on the nightstand a tiny framed needlepoint that said, “Sisters are forever.”

My brothers are over a decade younger than my sisters and me and we don't have the same mother so our upbringings were starkly different. My sisters and brothers love each other and we never use the terms “half-brother” or “half-sister.” The very thought of splitting the love we feel that way is offensive and unnatural. 

But my sisters and I have a unique bond beyond what we have with our brothers. Our relationship is complicated and intense. We are close and far at the same time. None of us lives in the same city and we mainly see each other at whole-family gatherings. I would love to have more trips with just the three of us but the complexities of our sisterhood have precluded that. For now.

I have a very close relationship with my mother’s sister, an aunt who lives in the same part of the country as me. Sometimes I feel like my soul was dropped into the wrong place when it was hatched. Instead of going to my aunt, it made its way into my mother’s womb, a place where I never felt I quite belonged. I wasn’t easygoing, playful, and likable like my sisters. I was nervous and uptight, worried from the age of three. 

In our chaotic house growing up my sisters and I were each other’s allies. But our allegiance was complicated because none of us could really tame the wild sea we were thrashing around in. The best we could do was hook our tiny hands around each other’s wrists to keep a better grip across the life raft as we rocked with the waves of the wild sea. 

When we grew up and were able to leave home, my sisters and I all ran in different directions, subconsciously grateful to be free of the traumatic bond that held us together for so many years. 

Despite our distance, we have a deep love for one another and have always prioritized our kids having relationships with their aunts and uncles, no matter what is happening with any of us. 

In our family, there are six nephews and one niece — my daughter. My daughter doesn’t seem to mind being the only girl. She’s an only child and used to being in the role of “only.”

On the final night of our weeklong vacation, my two sisters and I decided to take an after-dinner walk. My daughter, now seventeen, said she wanted to join us. I was surprised that she’d want to walk along the country roads with me and my sisters instead of hanging with her cousins but welcomed her wholeheartedly.

The four of us started our walk together, a slow meandering up the gravel road. Soon after, my daughter and my twin sister splintered off ahead and I hung behind to talk to my younger sister. After about forty minutes the configuration changed and my younger sister and daughter began walking together behind my twin and me.

I don’t know what my sisters and my daughter talked about. Maybe my sisters shared family secrets, advice about college, stories about our childhood. As I witnessed them walking together I felt happy for the time they were sharing, grateful that my daughter has her aunts.

As the mother of a seventeen-year-old, I am in a constant state of wanting to connect and know my daughter a little bit better; I long to understand her and for her to understand me. Normally I would have sidled up to her and tried to engage, to take advantage of this time away to bond with her.

But on that hour-and-a-half walk, I never took a turn walking with my daughter. And I didn’t regret it. I didn’t even really think about it. Somehow seeing my daughter connect with my sisters was more than enough for me. It was almost like I was connecting by proxy.

As soon as I got home from my trip I wrote my sisters a text, “Let’s get together in for Labor Day,” I wrote. My twin wrote back, “That’s like… tomorrow,” indicating that the logistics of this kind of trip would be impossible to pull off with our geographic diversity, jobs, and parenting responsibilities. 

I felt that familiar distance — the one I’ve gotten used to, of being far away until the next time we gather in person. But the saying on that needlepoint is true. Even with the disappointment I feel right now being so far away from them, I know in my heart that sisters are forever. I can’t wait to see them again.

Not Bad for 53

 Last week I looked online for “bikinis for middle-aged bodies.” My body has changed. My middle corridor is like a barrel. I look at my daughter’s slender waist and wonder why I didn’t wear a bikini when I could, when my body looked like hers. Bikinis are so much easier to wear. They don’t ride up your butt. You don’t have to take your whole suit down to go to the bathroom. And generally, they’re cuter. 

I found a bathing suit with really high bottoms and really low tops. Essentially only an inch or two of my midriff would be showing. It was perfect. My partner had recently bought a bikini with a similar style and I thought it looked adorable on her. I hoped that if I got a similar suit it would look adorable on me too.

Yesterday I wore it for the first time. I was excited to wear it. I imagined myself looking sporty and fit, like I’d intentionally chosen that high waist for style, not just to cover my tummy, but because it was fashionable and cute. 

Yesterday my partner and I went on a hike with some friends and afterward visited a beautiful glacial river. The water was freezing and just a few of us braved the frigid temperatures and dove in. My partner filmed the whole thing.

Before getting in the bath last night I peeled away my sweaty clothes from a long day of hiking and driving and saw myself in the mirror. “Not so bad,” I thought to myself, “for 53, not so bad.”

But as I lay in the bath I watched the video of myself getting in the river. My eyes immediately went to a spot of cellulite on my upper left thigh. It was all I could see. Everything else became a blur. The rock wall bordering the river covered in tiny plants was invisible to my thigh-scrutinizing eyes. The sound of the rushing river behind my friends' laughter and encouragement as we prepared to dive in was muted.

I used my thumb and index finger to expand the image of myself and my new bathing suit. In addition to the spot of cellulite on my upper left thigh, I could still see the lump at my abdomen and I cringed at the pale 2 inches of space between the top and bottom of my bikini.

My body has changed. A lot. I can still hike eleven miles and feel good. I get up every morning and take a walk and feel good. My body serves me every day. What, at age 53 am I still longing for? What kind of body am I trying to get? It’s a ridiculous, constantly moving target. 

A few weeks ago my partner and I went on a trip to the Canadian Rockies. We stayed in a huge hotel with throngs of couples and families. I noticed lots of young families — women and men in their mid to late thirties with little kids. The women were consistently fit and the men consistently less so. The husbands seemed to have let themselves go a little bit. 

The almost-middle-aged men walked confidently around the hotel with nice round bellies or a little squirt of flesh around their middles. And they didn’t seem to care. They didn’t wear loose-fitting shirts that hung wide to cover or hide their bellies. They proudly wore fitted polo shirts tucked into their slightly too tight pants’ waists. It made me mad. I have never known that feeling of just accepting the changes in my body. 

I am still worried about that little lump in my belly that came with menopause and now I’m obsessed with that cellulite on my thighs. What if the lump flattened and the cellulite disappeared? What would I scrutinize then? I know I’d find something.  

I have been doing this dance, this “there’s always something to fix” dance, my entire life. I look at my seventeen-year-old daughter and pray that she escapes some of this madness. I dream that she and her peers will be more accepting of their bodies than I and my peers are. I shudder to think at what a poor t role model I am for her right now.

Some days I look at the skin on my thighs, how it’s a little bit crepey and hangs like a deflated bean bag when I do downward dog. I know my skin will never shrink back to what it looked like when I was in my thirties, so I try to accept it. I’ve gone back several times to look at that river video again, to try to see it differently. I want to accept this body. Like giving myself exposure therapy, I have watched the image over and over until it didn’t make me furrow my brow with judgment. 

I wonder what it would be like to just accept this body. I wonder if it’s possible, after all these years, to just say, “This is it. This is my body and I accept it.” I love my new bikini. It’s comfortable and convenient and cute. I want to feel good in it. I don’t want to ruin the experience by focusing on my belly or my thighs. 

And the truth is, nobody cares but me. Maybe that’s what those squishy-bellied men in the Canadian hotel believe. They grew up knowing that no one really cared about their bodies. They weren’t objectified and marketed to in the way girls and women are so they don’t get it. They don’t know the experience of perfection. Walking around with a little extra belly fat is no big deal for them.

When I looked in the mirror before my bath last night I had the right idea. “Not bad for 53,” I thought to myself. That’s the message I ought to be repeating to myself when I jump to the “bodily imperfections” in pictures or videos. It’s not too late for me to adopt this new way of thinking. I still have many years left in this vessel that’s served me well for over half a century. My commitment starts now. My new mantra begins. I’ll say it over and over until I believe it: “not bad for 53.”