My fondest childhood memories are the times I spent alone
with my mother at the fabric store and in her sewing room.
To most kids that would be the most boring thing on earth. They’d choose the trip to Disneyland or
the first time they hit a home run in Little League or when they won the
spelling bee and got all the way to State. Those would indeed be fond memories, but none of them is
mine.
My mother was an artist with fabric. She made breathtaking original quilts
and fabric mosaics that were meant to hang in a window where the light shone
through the material like it was a stained glass window. She didn’t sell any of these creations,
but she did give some as gifts. Mostly,
though, she kept the quilts folded and stacked ceiling high in the closet of
her sewing room, while the mosaic hangings decorated windows all around our
house. Every room you went into
was a kaleidoscope of color.
My mother took refuge in her sewing room, and we kids were
not allowed in there – except for me on the days we came back from the fabric
store.
My mother wasn’t one to show her emotions and there were
times when I wondered if she loved any of us. But when I saw her in the fabric store, fingering a swatch
of chintz or a bolt of striped denim, I caught a rare glimpse of who she was
inside. She had a look of rapture
on her face when she held a piece of dull red cotton up to the store window and
it transformed into a glowing Christmas tree light.
“Look at this, Emma,” she’d say. “Isn’t this bee-you-tee-ful?” She’d string out the syllables just like that, as if that
would prolong the joy she felt in her heart at the sight of that light.
I loved seeing her so happy, so alive. And on those days I felt like I was
basking in that glow, too. I felt
like she loved me so much she wanted to share her joy with me.
Together we would choose the fabric for her next project and
together we would carry the soft bags home. Together we would arrange the swatches on the special
shelves my father had made for her.
All the colors of the rainbow were there on those shelves, ordered by
hue so that the shelves themselves looked like they made up a quilt.
The shelves took up one whole wall. Another wall held a corkboard where my
mother pinned the paper patterns she drew up. The pins had balls of color on the ends that my mother
placed in the spot those colors would go on her quilt. A third wall was home to
the Singer sewing machine where all the work was done, and in the middle of the
room was a bare table where she laid out her fabrics to cut and arrange. She had it in the middle so she could
walk all the way around it and look at the design from every angle.
On the fourth side of the room was a big window that looked
out onto Grove Street and the jacaranda trees that lined it. Beneath the window was an upholstered
bench where sometimes my mother would sit and stare out at the world beyond her
house. If I caught her doing that
before she heard me come in, I thought she seemed like a prisoner dreaming of
freedom. But the sewing room was
cheerful and bright and full of the fabrics she loved, so I could never
understand why I felt so sad when I saw her there looking out. When she heard me and turned her eyes
away from the window, they brightened when she saw me standing at the edge of
her fabric world. So, when she let
me enter that world, I felt close to her, part of what she loved.
I was fourteen when she got sick and almost sixteen by the time she could no longer find the strength to
leave the bedroom. Propped up by pillows in her bed, she’d say, “Emma,
bring me some fabric.”
I’d go to the fabric shelves and fan through the swatches,
picking out a few I especially liked.
I carried them to her and laid them out on the bed.
“Make a pretty design,” she’d say.
I’d arrange and re-arrange the swatches until I was
satisfied. Then I’d look up at her
for approval. She’d think a while, biting her lower lip and tilting her head, and then she’d say,
“That blue one in the corner – change it with the purple one in the
middle.” I’d make the switch and
she’d smile and nod.
“That’s better,” she’d say. And when I looked at it, I could see that making that one
little change had made the design so much more pleasing. It was magical. How did she do that?
After she died it took me a long time to go back in the
sewing room. It was just as she’d
left it the year before. Someone besides
me had been in there, though, because no dust had gathered. Every surface was clean and tidy. The shelves of fabric still formed a
beautiful rainbow and when I opened the closet, all the folded quilts were in
perfect order. A life’s work, I
thought, as I ran my fingers over them.
I picked up one of the fabric mosaics, took it over to the
window and held it up to the light.
A prism of color exploded in the room and I felt my mother’s spirit
there, joyful, just as she’d been in the fabric store.
I so love this piece. Your writing has such heart and warmth in it. I love your details from the description of the sidewalk outside the house to the fabrics within, to the secret life inside of Emma's mom into which we get just the barest glimpse. Emma is so real and so is her mother. I'd love to get inside her mother's head (if you ever feel like going there!). Thanks for sharing this piece.
ReplyDeleteErmmmm...everything that Nancy said! :) You've subtly captured the complicated mix of emotions Emma feels -- happy memories of time spent watching and helping her mother create art, and the underlying sense of melancholy that her mother seemed "like a prisoner dreaming of freedom." You leave us knowing that Emma may be the protagonist here, but Emma's mother has a story of her own.
ReplyDeleteLiz, you have a way of capturing the very soul of your characters with such telling details. And how much you care for them is always apparent and draws the reader in. You remind me of that fellow who wrote the John-Boy television series. He had such a warm touch, a perceptive eye, and a tender heart and his stories were always both insightful and touching.
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