When we moved here I promised the girls that we'd find a place for the sewing cabinet. It ended up in the laundry room/porch area where it remained free and clear for use for all of maybe seven days. When Maddie and I cleaned last week, we moved it into the project room. Hopefully it has found a spot where it will stay free and clear for use... for at least as long as the girls have a desire to use it.
It's quite possible that this is a project I've been dragging my feet on. It was my choice to keep the sewing cabinet. Dad offered it to me shortly after Mom passed away and I didn't hesitate to accept. I took it, and I took the sewing machine that she bought for me when I was in junior high school. The drawers of the sewing cabinet are one of the few things left in our lives that are exactly as she last touched them.
My hair, she must have saved this from a 16 month hair cut.
I think of the many things I have watched change in the last ten years. Right after Mom died, it was hard to walk in the house (my folk's house) without feeling her there, remembering her. Dad started the process of cleaning it out and finally remodeling. It helped. A lot. Things needed to change, not because we didn't want to remember her, but because we needed to remember her with our hearts and our minds. Walking into a room where the yarn on the table was last touched by her hands or the partially finished doll still had a needle placed there by her hands was just too much.
This sewing cabinet, I have saved and I have avoided because the very act of opening a drawer seemed to release her. Her hands had placed all that stuff there. She was the last one to touch those scissors, that piece of elastic, that trim that I recognized from the year she decorated her room in burgandy colors.
We cleaned out the drawers. The girls and I took out every scrap, every item saved. I remembered. I shared stories they'd probably never heard before. And it wasn't nearly as hard as I expected it to be. Emotional, sure, but not hard.
These snaps, the girls haven't seen these on clothing. The packages were marked at 10 cents each! No year. I wonder just how old they are.
And we found some treasures in there I didn't expect. There was pocket watch--Made in America by American Workmen--bought by my grandfather (Mom's Dad) in 1927 for $2.79. According to the note in the lid (in my grandmother's handwriting) "This Elgin purchased July 1927 Amarillo, Tex. Ran till August 1952" His wallet was also there. The one he must have been carrying his final days as the license expiration date was 1974. He died in 1973.
Now the drawers are clean and orderly. Evie's already made herself a bag and Maddie is eager to get started on "something" she can wear.
Mom would have been happy to see her cabinet being put to such good use.
2 comments:
Tracy, another beautiful blog. And even though I did not know her, I have no doubt that your mom would have loved to see her cabinet be used with so much love and enjoyment. And how wonderful to find such treasures inside...placed there with love years ago...a special gift of memories for today.
I loved this piece. How tender the writing, how solid the connections to your mother. You provided wonderful word images of items being pulled from the drawer and stories being shared with your children. You're the connection between the kids and their grandmother - and they will know her through you. And that she saved a clipping from your haircut also tells them a bit about her. Great writing, Tracy.
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