Serendipitously Sewing Sadness
a goodbye story
It starts with a feeling, deep in the bones…
and a longing to walk barefoot in the mud and among Bloodroot.1
Even embroidery doesn’t satisfy.
And then your husband’s grandmother’s purple hankie calls for attention…and all you want to do is sew…in a sloppy kind of way.
And walk barefoot in the woods and put your feet in a meandering stream.
My body knows things before I do, like how, without fail, for decades, I’d be an angsty mess just before getting my period and it would surprise me, every time.
But as I sit and sew and worry that I’m not motivated to write or edit photographs, it occurs to me that I’m in the midst of a goodbye story.
These fabrics, most of which I wore in college and in my early 20’s, have accompanied me for decades. I had once thought I’d turn them into a Kaffe Fassett quilt, but that never happened.2
Instead, I create Kaffe Fassett-esqe colorful compost photographs…and see synergies between fabric, feet, and food waste.
I zig and zag and reinforce the loose edges I refuse to fold under in a careful kind of way.
And while in the midst of using the sewing machine to layer these Laura Ashley patterns into a thing…it occurs to me that my body remembers that it’s been almost four years since my mother died and was buried on a bed of compost she and I created together.
This feeling, deep in my bones, is real.
And somehow, all the threads of this heavy indigo-day feeling, start to make sense.3
I’ve been working on an essay about my mother-in-law and her attachment to stuff, and was stuck, unable to articulate the ‘what’s it about.’ Ugh. I hate that feeling.
Serendipitously, I started my sewing project with my mother-in-law’s mother’s hankie, which was the perfect shade to accompany my old clothes.4
Clearly it’s time to say goodbye to the vision of a perfect quilt and to transform all these materials into something else.
So many memories - and they’re not even mine. After my mother died, I made five ‘sloppy sewing’ quilts from old sheets and linens that once belonged to all the women I’d loved and lost.
Now the newest mini quilt (It’s only 4’ x 4’) sits on top of the pile of these creations - - pieces of this and that stitched together into a thing of use…not just to sit on or lie under, but as containers for all those feelings, from deep in my bones, that I didn’t understand until I processed them, one piece of fabric, one stitch at a time.
How cool that in sewing sadness, clarity and understanding presented themselves?
Serendipity, the occurrence of finding valuable, agreeable, and interesting things by chance rather than through searching, is clearly part of my creative practice.
You’d think I’d be comfortable with the process by now, but like my period, it takes me by surprise every time.5
Thank you, Mummy, for reminding me to go to the woods to re-equilibrate. Thank you, Pam (my mother-in-law), for inviting me to sew some stuff. And thank you, Lilly, for keeping me company along the way.
And, as always, thank you for sharing this space and your time with Lilly and me.
With gratitude for you being you,
Lyn
Check out this tree - - It’s like its two trunks are kissing! I’ve walked by it for more than a year and only noticed it because of Lilly’s stubborn unwillingness to leave the possibility of swimming - - the thing that helps her re-equilibrate.
What are your re-equilibration strategies when that indigo-day feeling presents itself?
Bloodroot is an early spring ephemeral. My mother taught me about them and before she died, we transplanted some to our garden next door. I wish I’d remembered to bring some of them with me here to Vermont, but it turns out I don’t need them in my garden when they are everywhere in the woods just across the street.
So Kaffe Fassett, the well-known American Fiber Artist, came to Portsmouth, NH in 2001 to offer a quilting workshop at a local fabric store. That is where we lived, then, and at the time, I was pregnant with our second child and thought I’d make her (I knew it was girl, by instinct, not the ultrasound) a quilt. But I’d never quilted before and was so intimidated by the process, that I rolled up the bits of material and the felt backing they provided and forgot about it…At some point I took what I had laid out that day apart and stuffed it into a bag, which somehow made it to my studio and offered just the right raw material for this new project.
When I called my sister, author of The Gusset, to talk about the day and I said I was feeling blue, she responded with calling the day an ‘indigo day’ — so much more compelling than blue!
Nine years ago, in an effort to spare my mother-in-law sadness about getting rid of her stuff when she moved to assisted living, I’d taken many of her things home with me, telling her I’d store them for her. And now they burden me, just as the pile of my old clothes have pestered me for decades with the vision of a perfect quilt.
So it turns out that the essay I am writing about Pam’s stuff is as much about my own relationship to things as it is about her. It’s also about the challenge of letting go in general and the need to practice saying goodbye to the small stuff, so that we have the skills we need to process the big stuff.
I remember all those yummy soft flowery fabrics. So perfect to make a quilt.
Also— love those woods. What a delicious looking path
I like the practice of letting go of small things so that you can eventually let go of large things. !! Like physical/psychological weight lifting.