Today is my mom's birthday. Happy birthday, Mom! As it coincides with Mother's Day, I present to you a three-part series about my mother.
(Mom, I'm going to make you cry.)
You’d think that, growing up with only brothers, I’d’ve
been super close with my mom, that we’d be best buds, standing together in the
face of all the guys. Eh, not so
much. I was Daddy’s Little Girl (still
am) and I’ve never been much for talking about stuff. It’s not that we weren’t close but that
fluffy, share everything friendship you sometimes see in movies and TV (I’m
actually thinking of Gilmore Girls
right now) was never ours. Sometimes, I wonder what that has been like for her. But I can't change the past, only do better in the future.
Enough about me.
Let me tell you about my mom.
Mom taught me how
to sew.
One of my earliest memories – perhaps even the earliest – is peering up over the
edge of a table or desk watching my mom at work on the sewing machine. She was making me and my older brother
stuffed rabbits. Those rabbits – Whisper
and Grocery Store – now sit on my bookshelf, both still with their original
outfits. Grocery Store’s arms got torn
off and we haven’t sewn them back on but for an over 30-year-old rabbit, he
looks pretty good. (Clarification: Whisper was mine, Grocery Store my brother’s. Whisper also lost her arms at various times
but they did get sewn back on more
often). Those rabbits traveled a
great many places with my brother and me.
And it wasn’t just stuffed animals that she made. Up until I was about 16, I think my mom made
almost every single dress and skirt I owned.
The rare, store-bought dress I owned was most likely given to me by
someone else. We’d go together to the
fabric store and pour over patterns to pick which one Mom would make this
time. Then we’d go choose the fabric,
matching colors and patterns and analyzing which would look best together. We picked out fabric to make the boys shirts
too.
But every Easter and Christmas, Mom would make me a
special dress. I marked years by my
Easter and Christmas dresses. One year
my Christmas dress was cherry red with tiny white polka dots, white cuffs on
the short, puffed sleeves, and a white peter pan collar edged with lace. An Easter dress was a soft, dusty mauve with
a coordinating collar. There was a set
of jumpers made for casual wear – one of those was rust and teal with tiny
mushrooms in the plaid (yes, mushrooms).
There’s a box at Mom and Dad’s house that is full of fabric scraps from
the dozens of dresses Mom made over the years.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we could still tell you what the dress looked
like from the bits of cloth.
Somewhere in junior high or early high school, Mom
decided that it was high time that I started making my own clothes. We started with simple broomstick skirts –
the kind that is made of three or four tiers of fabric gathered and bunched
together (my brothers told me they looked like layer cakes when I
twirled). From there, I graduated to
dresses and finer fabrics. (I even made
dresses for three of my friends one year so we could all match).
We didn’t just stop with what the patterns showed
though. Mom helped me understand how the
pieces worked together so that we could adapt the pattern to make something new
or to tailor it to fit us, not some imaginary version of us. I have used those skills to design costumes
for my brothers and friends that actually fit and look very little like the
original pattern. To this day, if
something doesn’t fit right, I’m saying “Moooom – help!” and she has always
been there for me.
Tune in Friday for part two
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