I wanted to pull the thread, unravel the scarf of my silence and start again from the beginning – Jonathan Sofran Foer
This week was a little like sitting on the step of Aunt Nettie’s sewing room. The step because it wasn’t so much a room as a tiny former foyer. She sat at her sewing machine looking out onto Woodside Avenue where any number of older Italian women needed to be kept “an eye on”, Gramma Marco, Mary Sinise, Mrs. Spadafrank, you get the picture. It’s not lost on me that I now sit at my laptop looking out onto Stowe Lane where any number of older women need to be kept “an eye on” also. Such is the chore of a real neighborhood.
As she worked mending this or that or making a dress for so and so or altering a jacket for someone else my job was to pick up the many threads she snipped and dropped. There is a golden rule of life that says don’t ever pull the loose thread on your…whatever, fill in the blank, shirt, scarf, skirt. This did not apply to her (or my Aunt Millie), she could pull a thread and unravel any number of inches that needed to be snipped and resewn or any collar that didn’t lay exactly straight. These were the squiggly crimped threads that embedded themselves around the loops of the rug and under and over and made it impossible to vacuum but really she was keeping me busy and out of her hair.
Once all done with the threads (that never happened) I could play in the button box. There was every kind of button you could imagine mostly cut off of garments that were so thread bare they had to go in the rag bag. There were some cards of buttons for brand new garments and there were buttons by the dozen in small cellophane bags. There were embroidery snips, tailor’s chalk and thimbles and safety pins all the tools required to take something apart and to put something back together. I learned much in that room just by watching.
That was this week, unraveling the scarf of my silence, picking up the threads, salvaging a collar, unlooping the squiggly long threads that had gotten somehow crimped around long forgotten memories. Taking many childhood somethings apart and putting them back together with an adult’s understanding. Using new buttons and snaps to tailor my ordinary photos into stories.
It was sometimes painstaking work, sometimes dreamy spellbinding work, all of it creative work which I’m looking forward to continuing throughout the year. The path for this generous gift was provided by robin sandomirsky & alisha sommer through Liberated Lines – Amplify. They have my gratitude.
