Not the sewing machine itself but the knowledge of how to use it, the experiences with it and her and the lessons about creating something out of nothing, about repurposing, about being self-sufficient and most of all, about being of service. These were the gifts my mother shared when she had no money to share the gifts I asked for as a child. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but these gifts informed my ways of being, crafted the mesh through which I experienced the world – every fiber teaching me that there is always a way, I just have to figure it out find a way somehow.
We lived moments of scarcity, times when there just was no money for clothes for us much less for my dolls, for extras, only for the bare necessities, food, a roof, thrift stores and food banks were our saviors. So when my aunts and uncles gifted me dolls and I wanted to buy them clothes, it was a fast and easy no. I just wanted what the other kids had, what I saw on our 11 inch black and white, what hung on the racks at the Sav-On across the street from the trailer park. Those cool suits and dresses and bathing suits for my Wonder Woman Barbie or my Brooke Shields Barbie or all my other working women Barbies and the life size dolls from when I was a toddler some which made it across the border with me in the trunk of a car. Instead, she would buy me a book every time I asked for clothes for my dolls because books were less expensive and she would always remind me we could make the clothes ourselves.
And so we did. Sometimes we would crochet dresses, shorts, shirts for my dolls – for all my dolls and even for us. She frequently crocheted us clothes when she couldn’t buy us clothes and taught me how to do the same for my dolls when I could not buy clothes for them.
This is my favorite picture of us, of all of us, of my childhood in the U.S. because it says so so much. About the decade in which it was taken, the luxuries we had or didn’t have, but more importantly about the unity in our home – we were all together in our crochet garments – smiling faces with all the love we needed me and my dolls, one even has a hat my mom thought of everything. There we were making something where there was nothing. I wanted clothes for my dolls and I got them but I got so much more- that knowledge of how to crochet yes, but also that knowledge that money didn’t matter cuando te las ingenias- when you ingenious it.
That was always her answer. We can make it ourselves – what a gift this became. My pants no longer fit? No problem, cut them into shorts and use the scraps to make dresses for your dolls. This is where the sewing machine came in. Denim scraps, pieces of discarded dresses, t-shirt sleeves, and my favorite, fancy curtains made fancy dresses. I quickly learned to sew. We made so many different styles that I had some to put in my Barbie store in them tiny hangers and spent hours playing by myself while she was at work. She worked as a Certified Nurse Assistant at a convalescent home like her mother before her, she was of service to others and taught me how to do the same- even if it was my dolls to start. Sewing, crocheting, needle point, I know it all and frequently did it for others – the live two leggeds not just my dolls. Now I say the same thing she once did, there’s a t-shirt that doesn’t sit right? No problem, bring out the sewing machine, make it what you want.
And now that her body is failing her that she feels like she’s not taking care of me, I want to send this, the gratitude for the gifts, into the ether the filaments of the universe, dark matter, dark energy, normal matter, all that envelops us, so that it may become part of her the way her gifts have become a part of me.
estoy desgranando 