When I first read the topic for the second Memoir Monday installment, I was a little afraid! Yes, I was! How would I ever talk about my mother?! I remembered snippets of things she did and said, I remembered flashes of looks on her face at certain moments, I remembered kindnesses when I was sad or sick, but the answer to "What was your mother like?" eluded me. I had no idea what to say.
I had started breeding myself by the time my mother and I shared a really good laugh together, a laugh about the two of us. On that day, I looked up and said to her "All of a sudden, you don't seem that much older than me." I will never ever forget how she laughed that night. How I wish I could hear that again!
My mother had a devastating stroke just when I had matured enough to want to know her.
The solution to my posting quandary came to me as I was commenting on a post of @galenkp's - he posted about the strengths he developed in childhood as a result of doing household chores, in his case splitting wood, lots and lots of wood.
My mother came alive to me in my response to his post.
My mother taught me how to sew...
...and sew I did, hours and hours on end. I made most of my own clothes. After only a short walk to the locally owned department store on Main Street of my then-bustling hometown, I would come home with a new pattern and a couple yards of cloth. Back in the day when we paid for everything by cash or check. Imagine that!
Mom and I both did all of our sewing on a very old Singer sewing machine, one that very well could have been my mother's mother's, maybe even her grandmother's. Someone had procured all the gadgets that went with that thing, especially a button-holing device that could be augmented by all sorts of other gadgets to sew zig zags, circles, monograms and other shapes. And I knew how to use it all.
My mother was very proud of my sewing skills.
At some point, Mom decided to get a more modern machine so that she could do even more cool stuff, and she gave our old machine to me. Alas for her, the new, $1000 machine didn't produce better results than that old Singer, and was complicated to use.
But lucky for me, I still have that old Singer, and a beauty it is.
That baby hasn't been used in forty four years. I still remember the last thing I ever sewed, a dress shirt for my new boyfriend, who was to become my husband and the father of my three children. It was a deep red, with buttons with sail boats on them. I worked my tuchus off on it, and it was a beautiful shirt if ever there was one. The moment I gave it to him was the last time I ever saw it, but that story is for another post.
I've carried The Singer around with me for those forty four years, unopened, gathering dust in several basements.
Let's open it right now, and see what memories come along.
Please imagine my squeal of delight when I saw these scissors!
My mother would FREAK OUT if she caught any of us using her sewing scissors for anything other than cutting fabric or threads, especially if we used them to cut paper!
That sentiment was not passed on to me, and I have ruined many a pair of expensive scissors by using them to cut paper. Those few times I have needed to cut yarn, fabric, thread, twine in the past forty years, I have had to practically saw through them to get anywhere. Here I am, thinking of my mother, and thanking her for instilling me with enough of her respect for a good pair of sewing scissors that I thought to stow a pair in this case. I hope I have the good sense to treat this scissors well.
And here we have the precious button holer, the gadget that enabled us to do all sorts of fancy things. The first picture in the post is one of the gadgets I can attach to the button holer to do ...... something! I have no idea what! I feel Mom standing over my left shoulder on that first day she showed me how to use this thing. I can smell her! Oh! I miss her now!
I wonder how many times she and I used this tape measure together, to hem something, measure a waist or a pant leg, or see if we had enough fabric left over to fashion a sash for a dress that needed a little something more to be flattering. Things were prettier then, women included, don't you think?
Take this spool of pure silk thread for instance, still on the machine from that last time I used it. This was all in the days back before mercerized cotton thread became all the rage. My mother embraced that new thread robustly, it was much easier to use, didn't snag and tangle as easily, but I find pure silk thread to be more romantic, ya know? I have gobs of old threads, generations of the stuff. The colors are gorgeous, the spools are of wood, and I go reeling back to the days when women were adept at womanly things. Now we're supposed to like doing the same things men like doing, and many of us don't know womanly from paint chips.
My mother was womanly.
Here it is, in all its glory, released from decades of neglect and disuse. This will need some repairs before I can use it again. Luckily, my hillbilly town has a sewing machine repair shop, and one that specializes in just this type of machine! I imagine legions of women, much like my mother, still sewing away in the hills. They have to get their patterns online I suppose, delivered through Amazon or some such, possibly not made of those tissue thin papers that had to be unfolded very carefully, pinned to the cloth according to the instructions, then approved by my mother before I made any cuts.
My mother taught me attention to detail.
This last shot is of the bobbin. I picked up the bobbin reverently in my left hand and wondered, very briefly, if I could even remember how to put it in under the sewing plate. Happily, I lifted the release lever automatically with the middle finger of my left hand, unerringly fitted the bobbin to its rod, and released the lever. It stuck! I did this as if the last time I did it was just yesterday. I'm pretty sure I could thread the machine without error or hesitation.
How I hope to begin sewing again! What a wonderful way to bring my mother back that would be!
Here we've come to the end of this post, which was only incidentally about my mother. Perhaps I'll add to this in another post, including pictures of her, and the memories that will come from looking through those old pictures. Now I think I could write a great many posts about her, I just needed to get started.
Thank you @ericvancewalton for these memories. I cannot thank you enough.
This is my entry to the second week of @ericvancewalton's initiative Memoir Monday. Every week, we write to a prompt about some aspect of our lives. This week's task was to write about our mothers.
Thanks for reading, and please go write your own!
footer by our dear SilverFish, @mondoshawan
I really enjoyed this post.
I recognized the cover photo before I opened it as a part for a sewing machine, although I wasn't sure exactly what it's function was either.
My Grandmother had a black singer. She had it in a sewing table where it could fold down out of site and a hinged lid would cover it. When using the machine, the opened hinged lid added table space to work on. She sewed a lot when my Mom was growing up and taught my Mom. My Mom is a good seamstress, but at nearly 90, she hasn't sewn much in years, more than just hemming and repairs. She didn't make all my clothes growing up, but she did make some dresses when I was young and some Pant Suits in my teens when those became all the rage.
I took Home Eck in school and I knew the basics of operating the machines. Although I did make a few things, I never seemed to have the patience for sticking with it. You can only imagine my Mom's face when in my teens, I produced the most beautifully colored Halter Top. LOLOLOL....that of course she didn't want me to wear out of the house. I can hem and repair and do crafts and the such, but mostly my machine just gets borrowed by sisters that don't have one. Even now I think it is at Mom's !
My Mom and Grandmother gave me my first machine when I graduated from High School and it was a good one. My Mom borrowed it when I moved halfway across the country for a while and it was better than a newer one she had by then, so I didn't ask for it back and bought another, which does fine for the things I rarely use it for.
This does bring back memories of my Grandmother and my Mother's younger life and those items which they made by hand for me.
Great post !
Thanks! A great response too, a post of its own.
That reminds me of one of my mom's faces. She was a home ec teacher in my high school, one of two. Mom was very proud of my sewing skills, and expected the other teacher to be impressed when I had to take her class (open a can of campbells, add milk and then water kind of stuff). I had superb finishing skills, but the other teacher had different technique for sewing down a facing (one thing I can't remember about sewing is the lingo - I'm old like that) which I simply could not do well, I kept reverting to the one that worked for me and the whole thing was messy, I can still see it today. My mother came home and told me she was ashamed of me. I don't remember if she used that exact word, but the look I can still clearly see after more than fifty years had "I'm ashamed" written all over it.
Our mothers were/are human. Human women.
One cool thing about writing this post is that I have learned I have very clear visual memories, especially of looks on faces, but fuzzy memories of any words that were used. I wonder how that affects my interpretation of events.
Thanks so much for your comment!
I enjoyed reading this so much, you're a great storyteller. Isn't it great how our parents live on through the things they teach us? I think about this sometimes when I do things like ride my bike, tie a necktie (which I don't do much anymore) or shine my shoes. Most things were more beautiful back then, no doubt. Thanks for taking part in this again!
I really love it Eric. I enjoyed telling this story! Thanks so much for hosting it. Wow!
My pleasure! There are some really great prompts yet to come.
That was a very enjoyable read and yes, things were prettier back then, when ladies were ladies. These days it seems to be a competition to see who can look the ugliest. How wonderful that you still have your mother's machine and better still, that you're going to get it fixed up and use it. If you're looking for commissions, I could do with a few summer dresses for Anarchapulco next year that aren't black:)
oh that would be so fun to make! Easy too. Lots of flowy gauzy fabric, to show-off-while-not-showing-off your shapely body, and to go with a black parasol.
Sounds like just the job! I made some of my own clothes in the distant past, to wit a black cloak with a ruffled collar and red lining and 2 monk's habits one black and one white.:)
Oh dear, this will be much more simple than that! Are you still into ruffled collars? I see a halter top neckline and shoulders-reveal of (black?) rope, with a loose ruffled collar. Maybe a criss-cross tie back (black?) that continues tying all the way down the ankle length skirt, but is open on the back for air circulation. Slits up the leg, as high as you like. Oh gosh I'm getting carried away. I'd have to start sewing today to pull that off hahahahaha 2 1/2 for me!
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Oh thank you so very much. I appreciate it.
What a little treasure that old Singer sewing machine is. And what a nice way to remember your mother for the Memories Monday initiative.
Speaking of scoldings for using sewing scissors, my mother who was always crafty with her hands also used to sew, but my sister and I never got past learning how to sew on a button hehe, but we always got a scolding when we used mom's sewing scissors to cut paper, lol.
I hope you get that cutie back to work pretty soon and are sewing again.
Haha so it wasn't only my mother then! I didn't teach that to my kids. I hardly ever cut fabric when they were growing up, and certainly didn't need those cuts to be as clean as would be needed to make a piece of clothing.
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Thank you!
This brought back many memories of my mother and how she taught me to sew, she made our clothes on an old Singer peddle machine, because back then we did not have electricity in our house. Thank you.
My pleasure my friend, my pleasure.
BEAUTIFUL matte-black sewing machine with aesthetic touches!! My 1949 Singer is very plain and basic. And not working. The tension. I should admit defeat and take it to a repairman. Yours is beautiful!
What a lovely post - your mom, teaching you to sew, and you LEARNING.
You still have "gobs" of sewing supplies - bless you! And repairmen in your "hillbilly" town.
I sooo want to live in a town like yours, with a neighbor like you!
Do you not live in, or very near, a town like mine? Iowa can't be that much different.
I would love to have you living next door!
It would be so fun to sew again, to bring her back to me. It was the thing we did together. Neither of my sisters took to it, and I loved it as much as she did.
I'm on an acreage near a very sprawling "city" where it takes 20 minutes to get from the west side to the east. We have not explored the small towns nearby as possible places to live (the commute, ugh). My mom's hometown is now a ghost town. It's really sad to see how towns have declined all over America. Some small towns manage to thrive even in the 21st Century. But the small town with its own grocery store, cafe, theater, etc, is almost extinct.
I hope you get your antique sewing machine repaired and that you can resume another one of your many many talents!
Our theater, which not long ago was one of only two that had been in operation for some length of time, has recently closed. Most of the small stores are closed, but we do have two large supermarkets, a couple of cafes, a big fancy country club. Curiously, there are very few bars. I think the drinkers must be at the clubs (american legion, VFW, Elk's etc) to socialize in the evenings. Those few bars we do have close very early, except for one. As the largest town in the county, this one is a veritable metropolis for people. Before the big stores and fast food joints opened on the outskirts of town (Runnings, Tractor Supply, Mcdonalds) out main street was very busy, all storefronts full and bustling. Now, half of them are empty. We had a great shoe store until the covid con hit. I would buy shoes there nearly every time I came to town. It's still a great place to live though. Lots of artists in the hills, where they can get a spectacular studio and home for the price of one square meter in Manhattan.
America needs a revival of the small town!
Less of the big box stores.
Less of Amazon.
More of the mom-and-pop stores and cafes and repair shops.
We need more apprenticeships, too, and less of the university style of "education."
Maybe you and I should run for president, LOL.
This is wonderful. Your mom sounds like a true lady. I agree with Eric about parents living on through the things and esp. the knowledge passed on to us <3
I now believe that memory is time travel. If you allow the memories to come fully back, you are there again if only for a nanosecond. I love writing these. Have you done so? Gonna go look.
What a beautiful sewing machine, but what more beauty your memories bring to it.
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