Sewing Lessons
“You still have your sewing machine?” my mother asked two weeks before she died of heart failure. I said yes, she nodded, satisfied with all that could be certain. The array of stars and planets the day she gave me birth decreed we’d miss each other in the mist of all our differences, unseemly daughter, stylish mother linked by a slender thread drawn from the spool, drawn down around the tension knob, fed through the obedient needle piercing the fabric, locking through loops of thread the wheel brings up from the bobbin below. A Featherweight, black base trimmed with triple lines of gold — her gift when I graduated high school. She’d reserved it used, we went together to the shop. With this tool for making dresses, curtains she conferred initiation into bare uncertainties, equipping me to be adroit as her immigrant parents were in New York, Detroit, Sam upholstering seats for Dodge, Pauline mending, making alterations. The feed dog rolls under the presser foot, tracks the fabric back and past, a light touch guides, puts a sturdy line of stitches in, seams the cotton, rayon, wool, catches the piping in between, inserts a pocket, fastens a placket. I used the Singer to piece batiks in greens and blues, made a jacket for myself last year. Lined in black, the jacket wraps around me like a sigh
— by Lisa Sarasohn