What We Sew

In the current version of my life with its inefficiencies and endless unfinished book projects, home improvements on hiatus, music in my head, itineraries and symphonic lapses... it occurred to me to attend to the small of pile of 'things for mending' I keep on a bench in the bedroom.  I am surprisingly able to thread a tiny-eyed needle and one by one I attempted to manage missing buttons, small legging holes, cloth strap repairs, unravelling sweater edges, etc.  There was something not just satisfying but 'connecting' about it.  I thought, of course, of my mother, who sewed and knit with great mastery and excellence.  She taught me-- patiently and humbly, with that sense of one woman handing down generational secrets of the sex.

My mother's sewing box-- like a kind of doctor's bag filled with threads, needles, patches, ribbons and bands... pin cushions, and most memorable of all-- the darning egg on a stick which resembled a rattle or Caribbean percussion instrument.  With this she deftly repaired holes in socks; my father had several pairs hand-knitted by mothers and in-laws during the war-- argyles and striped... woolen for warmth and insulation inside his cold paratrooper boots as he marched or jumped into surf and swamp. Why, I would ask her, do new and few and pew not rhyme with 'sew'? I am not smart, she would tell me.  You will be smarter. 

Who repairs socks these days?  My son often disposes of them after sports; I used to buy them in huge packs of a dozen.  I don't have a 'darner'.  My mother was given an old Singer machine-- one of the ones with a kind of foot treadle.  She never got the hang of it, but preferred to hem, baste and hand-backstitch in what I can only recall as something approaching perfection.  Those nights by her side-- with my girls' painted wicker basket and the colored spools-- well, they felt so 19th century, in a good way.  And it is not coincidence that my recent sewing evening was close to Mother's Day. I felt her presence more strongly than usual, as though she was approving of my feminine task, and the metaphorical resonance of a needle and thread, like a kind of penance.

Recently the discontinuation of the penny was announced; like many things these days, more trouble than worth.  We had our little banks as children; mine was a kind of ceramic doll-head-- very 19th century, with the porcelain hair done up in a bun, the coin slot in the back, and the topknot itself a pin cushion.  So my bank had a duel use.  Sometime in the 70's I went to my mother's house and retrieved and dumped the bank; they were all wheat pennies... quite old... I have them still, in a box here... waiting to be devalued, I suppose.

Our lives in those days were filled with things-- things had the properties of people, in a way... we looked at them , we took them to bed, we spoke to them, we passed them around.  To make a telephone connection, one had to pick up a heavy handle, rotary dial a bunch of numbers, extend a curly cord a foot or two and sit, close to the wall jack, speaking in one end and listening with the other. 

In the 1960's and 70's, women in the city often had an answering service.  When you left your apartment, you dialed in and somehow magically the operators would receive your calls.  When you returned you'd phone in and they'd read out the messages.  You had a little relationship with your operator; mine was Grace-- a different woman at night, but Grace knew everything.  The cost of this service was small; you''d send a monthly check and they'd clip the hand-written message sheets together in your bill.  Besides her perfect cursive, I had no idea how tall Grace was-- old or young, black or white. 

One could easily go a day now without actually speaking to anyone... our lives are so enmeshed by social media and all of these time-consuming communication platforms.  I have only a few friends who make telephone calls; we still have landlines although these get little use. I work at a gallery Saturdays; it specializes in vintage mid-century French design.  People are most fascinated when the furniture is staged with period objects.. old radios and televisions... it seems that much of our nostalgia revolves around objects.  Our former lives were filled with things-- notebooks, pencils, rulers, book bags, stuffed animals-- scrapbooks and photographs, postcards and stamp collections-- souvenirs, dolls, shells, rocks.  

I worry about losing my memory; my mother lost hers, could not identify many of the photographs she loved to pour over in her album.  My sister cruelly destroyed mine, effectively wiping parts of my own memory by removing associated images.  I wonder when I will forget my grade school teachers, the seating order, the classroom numbers... my childhood dogs who haunt my dreams.  It will happen, one day.. or I will not recognize my own neighbors and friends.. I will forget song lyrics and confuse Beethoven and Mozart sonatas... 

As addled as she was in later life, my mother did not forget how to sew. I wish I had more of the skirts and dresses she hemmed with such skill, the knitted sweaters and the vests, for warmth.  She sat at the piano, at the end, surprised by the sound of the notes, and for seconds her fingers formed chords, but then it all disintegrated.

We had these handmade rag dolls-- one side was a sleeping face, and the other awake.  We'd change their bonnet in the morning, as kind of wake-up ritual, and put them to bed at night. I wonder how many children will save their obsolete pennies in a porcelain bank, will learn to sew with needle and thread and will be able to identify a darning egg.  For a couple of hours the other night, I created a 'mended' pile and felt accomplished in a way-- my stack of repaired patched leggings and tights felt like a kind of badge.  My mother might have nodded her approval.

So many things have been lost along the way-- left in other countries, missing or stolen.  I know as we age we do not log the things we forget; they simply disappear without ceremony or conscience. This terrifies me... who will remind me of what I no longer recall? My mother wore a thimble; I never mastered the art of using one.. kind of like playing the bass with a pick... I still have a thumbpick Johnny Winter gave me once... another of these tangibles that seem more meaningful as life goes on.  One watches celebrity possessions being auctioned for vast sums these days... even clothing.  It seems when human company becomes less available, things provide comfort... connection. And some of them, like the poor penny, while non-functional, do not die. 

I have no daughter to whom I can hand-down my dwindling skills.  My son will not pick up a needle and thread and remember moments. We do have some hand-made souvenirs and old photos-- paper ones. My old rag doll still sits on the bed in which he has not slept for decades. She has a clearly sewn heart beneath her old clothing; it serves. 

Mother Time

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Grave New World

I watched a disturbing film the other night in which a British photographer, mourning the death of his teenage son, takes revenge on one of the local gang members who has been terrorizing his alcoholic grieving existence with acts of violence.   In the end, there is a bizarre twist and change of heart…. it was difficult to watch.

So many of my friends 'forgot' to have children.  It could have happened to me; I was sailing through a relatively self-centered existence when I found myself unexpectedly pregnant.  At first it seemed a little 'conceptual'… not much change in my day-to-day.  I ignored it, denied it… and suddenly in my 5th month or so, I thought I was miscarrying.  In the ER, the Drs. scolded me a little for my callow attitude.  It was a hot summer night; walking downtown I began to acknowledge that I was carrying life, and by the time I got home, I was teary and praying.  Cricket, I called the baby-- because that's how it had felt… don't leave me, Cricket.  I got on my knees by the bed and begged my version of God to give me a chance.  Next day I began eating well, frying liver for lunch-- making better choices… talking to my child silently, singing-- chanting, whispering in the dark, sending internal messages and listening.

I'd never felt this sort of intimacy before… I even dreaded the separation of birth, but that turned out to be another revelation.  How could anything, anyone… be so perfect and fascinating-- so miraculously lovely and infinitely compelling?  Instincts kick in… protection, love, compassion, empathy… the utter dependence and trust of an infant… the complete fulfillment of maternal devotion.  The smallest discomfort is a challenge-- a pain or illness is your own wound… you will lie down in front of cars for this being, give up blood and organs, sacrifice all creature comforts for a train set.

As they grow and separate further, you obsess over their daily absences and little independent lives-- you worry, pace, long and miss.  Their sweaty face after a ballgame is like celestial radiance.  Their victories are joy, their losses are devastating failures.  My son had a seriously trying teenage spell.  Arrests, troubles, suspensions-- he was cooler than cool, gangsta-tough, but so vulnerable.  I spent scores of sleepless nights; days were worse.  An illness or flu which kept him in bed --- my only respite.  There were panics and police visits… one night where I had a terrorizing call from a weeping mate of his who informed me after many minutes of distress that he was in jail.  My relief was beyond anything I'd ever felt; for a moment I was sure he'd been killed.  That moment-- the paralyzing, gut-shaking wrench of perceived loss-- taught me something about the impact of this kind of news.  The emotional range between life and death-- is massive.

Recent acts of terror-- the relentless sequential delivery of statistics and details-- have stacked up into a skin-thickening coat of familiarity.  In countries of civil distress, violence and death are a fact of life.  In New York, we live with daily shootings, muggings, elevator shaft accidents, crane collapses and drownings.  Domestic abuse, rape, cruelty and gang wars, concert violence and pediatric cancer-- heartbreak and suffering, neglect and wheelchairs.  We read, we watch news, we speak of it… we cry at movies, at ASPCA commercials, at sad songs and when our boyfriends or husbands stray.  But when I hear and see recent news of these mass killings, I think only of how every tragedy everywhere has a mother, a father… how the very possibility of my own child being taken from me is beyond any tolerable grief.  Unbearable:  this is the operative word.  We have all lost parents, friends, husbands… but our own child-- the thing we created and nurtured and carried as our own-- this is an unfathomable hole.  In the moment where I misunderstood that phone call, so long ago… I experienced the unbearable… and have never fully recovered.  I don't know how the parents of the Trayvon Martins and the Eric Garners-- of every single child in the Orlando incident, in the Paris incidents-- Nice-- the shopping malls, the schools and movie theaters-- of 9/11-- how they can go on.  I have seen them go on,  with varying paths of bravery-- some wanting revenge, some choosing forgiveness and mercy, some using medications or alcohol, seeking some peace or cause to fill part of their 'hole'… some discovering nothing but suicide relieves the pain.

Looking back to our own childhoods, so many of us find them lacking; possibly my own son will dis his childhood-- after all, he grew up without a father.  My own father the hero failed to protect me.  Times were different, he was not a natural parent, and he missed things-- people who wait in the wings to take advantage of children's innocence-- bad people.  We grow up and must learn to cope with these violations.  Some people hoard possessions to compensate for things they missed-- they collect lovers to try to forget their own neglect-- they seek new pain to purge that which someone inflicted on them.

But we devoted parents-- who take a vow every single moment-- for our babies, for our toddlers and adolescents-- for our naughty, bratty budding gangsters and our angelic young men with sparkles in their eyes--  we swear we will not let these things happen to our children.  We speak gently to them-- we touch them with tenderness,  we listen to their tiny terrors and bad dreams, we dry their tears, we cheer them on and share their defeats and try hard to give them some independence and core while we fight for their innocence and defend them with all we are.

And then there is a random train ride… or a subway psycho… a black plastic bag underneath their foot… an assault weapon at a rock concert-- a plane crash during a happy vacation… rifles in a classroom.  How do we process this, we careful, passionate, doting parents?  Every single senseless murder and death is a tragedy of incalculable proportion-- a catastrophic event-- a searing, ripping, unsealing pain that scars over only temporarily but opens like an unhealed wound with every memory.  Statistics are a leveling, distant thing… but death and grief are relentless bedfellows.  The dream of gravestones, of blood and tears and the remembered joy of birth-- how does one reconcile these things, how does anyone go on from such a gatepost?

The end of the film-- the hideous staging of revenge-- and the victim was clearly a perpetrator of heinous evil-- provided nothing but further grief, twisted non-closure, the sick panicky epiphany of regret, of human frailty and the utter fragility of even the roughest child-- of the line between death and life.   And the power of the crossing only reminds us that all this violence has a kickback-- a reaction, a consequence-- a hideous rippling brushfire effect--- and how the sorrow from an unnatural, premeditated murder or random death-- for the mothers-- gentle or tough--  is an utterly crippling, indelible life sentence.

The Tracks of Someone Else's Tears

It always seems my girlfriends eventually sync up their short-term relationship tidal clocks.  Things rise and fall, and suddenly they're each and every one slammed and up all night, and it's either a bottle or the phone.  Meanwhile I'm writing a song, and it's versus interruptus.   The words of Joseph Brodsky come to mind: if there is any substitute for love, it is memory.  Not, as they seem to insist, an online-arranged quickie or even a candidate from a  genuine husband-fishing site, or a blind date.  Really, nothing helps.  Memory, at this open-wound point, is painful and punishing.  Maybe notes for later, a revenge-blog--- a tear-producing contest, some really bad television-- okay, a couple of glasses of whatever you have on hand--never music, nor ex-boyfriends, films… not until a couple of layers of new skin have 'set'.

For those of us with some perspective--e.g.,  long-term serious heartbreak,  ribbon-worthy emotional challenges, kids who have had issues, family deaths… any kind of life seems preferable to the devastation of which we have had a peek.  I am no longer fussy about what I eat, and although I draw the line at fast-food coffee, most nights I'll say grace to a minimal plate, and pray for a hot shower and no muggings.  I occasionally wade out into relationship low-tide, but if I'm going to swim, I wear a rubber suit and bring my own oxygen.  Just saying.

Parentally speaking,  I'm way more unhinged when kids are upset-- for whatever reason.  It may be co-dependence, it may be hyper-mothering-- but there's that extra-sensory ghost of guilt hovering whenever our own offspring are flirting with the language of failure.  Every love relationship has a sort of death-throe-- even the healthy ones shed a skin and eventually morph into something less passionate and desperate; but when our kids are in flux, somehow the smoky nightmare of a child's suicide haunts me.  They are so fragile-- so unprepared, and it is my fault for sending them out into the world with plenty of warm sweaters and a decent education but an underdressed tender heart.

So I listen, and I empathize, because I have now let this little thread of fear weave itself into my night--- the kind that makes us prick up our ears at the sound of a siren and dread the local news.

Two stories that diluted my girlfriend-empathy and haunted my weekend--(besides the Weight Watchers poster-boy governor who had the amazing idea to handle his bridge and tunnel politics with the same solution his personal GI surgeon used on his gut).  One was the uptown oncologist who maybe let go of his son's hand for a second--- a split second-- and we all know how boys hate to hold hands especially when they've just been to their after school sports program or a peer playdate…  and the other was the 4-year-old boy who by some utter lapse in the system was helplessly left in the hands of sick sadistic monsters who were ironically paid by some agency for the opportunity of torturing this child literally to death and who had managed while still alive to remark to a witness that ' he's not sure about God'.  And still, being starved, burned, beaten and abused--- no one, including his birth mother and her posse band of lawyers--- was protesting until the cameras were turned on and the little coffin was being prepared.

Personally I remember 2 incidents that really threw me: once, I left my baby boy with his Grandma for about 2 hours and when I returned, she was weeping and blurted out---'he's not going to make it…'
I quickly realized she was referring to her 80-year old cardiac-compromised brother.  But for a brief moment, the bottom dropped out of my life and this simultaneous self-loathing and matricidal passion came up like a tidal undertow.  The second was one of those middle-of-the-night phone calls during rough teenage years, with a teary voice on the other end (my son's best friend) hysterically sobbing 'I can't tell you--- it's just too bad…' and me collapsing on the floor in grief and shock… and then barely hearing the next most beautiful words I have ever heard '... in jail'.  Still, for those seconds, twice--- I felt I could almost know the devastation of this very worst parental punishment.  But not quite.

We are each the center of our universe and for most of us our own personal grief is larger than any empathic sorrow we can feel for massive devastations and tragedies.  There are fires and typhoons and mutilations and war and genocide and earthquakes.  And here we sit in our little for the most part warm rooms-- worrying about stock portfolios, arthritic pets, bills-- crying over a broken relationship.   On the news disappointing retail sales numbers get slightly more time than these 2 children-- one well-cared, well-dressed and carefree-- the other a victim of suffering and abuse-- both innocent-- both just here-- 4 days ago-- -and now gone-- irreversibly, devastatingly, terminally and hopelessly absent; one leaving a father forever damaged, and the other leaving all of us with a hopeless sense that we have failed.  And I sit here, grateful that my own has survived another day, that this siren waxing and waning outside is not   for one of 'mine'-- not yet, anyway…  and feeling somehow guilty and sad and slightly fortunate at the same time.

And somehow, in some horrific version of television irony...I clearly hear, from my machine which is now airing some early morning repeat of some 'Pathetic Reality' show-- because this is what they are, these endlessly regurgitated variations on a revolting cheap theme-show yawn-- a woman saying 'Girl...Jesus might be okay as a companion, but you can't fuck him' (bleeped, of course--- but not so that you can't hear it).

I am a so-called rock-chick.  I have seen and done many things that have made my own mother compelled to distance herself.  So what misplaced, disinherited genetic morality trait has brought me to feel today like I have been sliced in half and dared to throw my lot in with some Solomon who has failed to step in to tell me or anyone else in this culture what to do about it?  Come back, Joseph Brodsky, and give us another option.