My Mother's Scissors

 

My mother was a very talented lady. I don’t think I understood that when I was a child. She did not work outside the home until after I was grown. Children do not recognize domestic engineering as a job because it is simply the result of love, right? How can expressing love in cleaning, cooking, reading, teaching, sharing, gardening, sewing, and laughing be work? Children just don’t understand. Sometimes adults don’t either.


Mama made a lot of my clothes. She could sew AND knit! I remember a few items more than others. Remember koolocs? I couldn’t wait for Mama to finish an orange pair she made just for her little girl. Oh! I had the most lovely poncho. I loved that poncho as a girl and would love to have one like it now.


In the last few years, I have worked at picking up sewing. WORKED at it! Sewing is not easy! I bet I spend just as many hours ripping out as I do stitching up! Mama made it look so easy. I’ve seen Mama lay out newspaper on the floor and make a pattern. Seriously! I can barely get a printed pattern out of the package without a mishap. Every item I have sewn has little mistakes. I can tuck most of them in and hide them from the world, but some of them show. I guess that is fitting because I do the same with my personal blemishes. My sewing never looks professional like Mama’s did, but I enjoy it just the same. Well . . . . when I am not ripping out, pricking my fingers with a pin or needle, and cursing like a Sailor I enjoy it!

Mother’s Toolbox

 Wooden Spools  

  

Yellow Measuring Tape

 

Silver Scissors  

   

Sewing Box   

Thimble   

Seam Ripper  

   

Unconditional Love    

Last week I had a conversation with a friend about her mother’s scissors. She was purging and found that she just could not bring herself to let go of her mother’s scissors. Even for someone who doesn’t sew, a Mother’s sewing tools are too intimate to part with.

I don’t know what went with my mother’s scissors. I don’t remember seeing them after she moved back to Colorado. I have a lot of Mama’s things, but not her scissors. I guess it is just as well because I also don’t have her talent. I hope one of my children will treasure my own scissors someday as much as I treasure the memory of my mother’s scissors.

Waiting to Sprout

When Mama died, someone gave me a poem that I carried with me for a long time. I am ashamed to say that I cannot remember her name. I see her face. But I don’t remember names. She might even be on one of my teams.

I lost that poem a few years ago, and I have searched everywhere for a copy of it. That is difficult because I do not know the name. The basic concept will live with me forever. The poem compares the mother to the redwood tree. The seeds of the daughter trees live in the roots of the mother tree, and the mother must die for the daughters to live. The comparison suggests that we can never become women in our own right until we have lost the women who gave birth to us.


I am still waiting to sprout.

My Sprouts