Theresa Lewis

The weatherman was calling for another winter storm. They said it was massive…through the States and up the Eastern coast. I had nothing better to do so I decided to reorganize my sewing box. It actually started out as my mother’s sewing box, but before she died, she gave it to me.

When I received the box, it had a lot of my mother’s sewing needs already in it. That was twenty-eight years ago. Over the years, I have added to it, but I have never gone through the entire contents, until today, that is.

The mahogany finished box has two extendable sides that open out to display three levels of sewing paraphernalia. Once I got into it, the memories started to flow. Some were good memories and some were sad.

From the time I was a child, I remember my mother making dresses, overalls, slacks and costumes for our grade school plays. She even made my wedding dress. Mom loved sewing and knitting, but her biggest obstacle was not having enough time to dedicate to it. It was understandable because she had ten children to look after.

Back in the good old days, if a sock got a hole in it, you sat down and darned it. Most people today just toss out their holey socks and buy a new pair. I came across a package of sock mending yarn and held it for a good five minutes while I studied all the colors of yarn in the package. I remembered mom putting a potato inside the sock then pulling the sock tight to open the hole that was to be mended. Mom was an expert at darning. Most of the time, you were hard pressed to see where the hole had been, once she had finished with it.

I even found a piece of dark brown heavy yarn that mom had used to knit me a brown coat with yellow angora trim. I never got to wear that coat because it was never finished. I think I was about eight at the time. I found it one day when my mother was finished working on it for that day and I took it out of her knitting basket and hid it under my bed. I had hated the brown color of it and my sensitive skin couldn’t stand to wear wool. Now I remember that I also pulled out most of the stitches. By the time my mother found it, it was infested with and eaten by moth worms; no doubt because it was real wool.

Talking about moth worms, I wonder if my younger sister remembers me finding a moth worm in one of my drawers and squishing it on her arm. She screamed bloody murder. Both parents came, flying into our bedroom half expecting to see her with her guts spilling out all over the floor, or a limb hanging on by a thread. When they found out it was because I had squished a moth worm on her arm, our parents wanted to kill both of us.

I found one lone strawberry shape button that I remember mom had used on the overalls she made for my sister and me when I was five years old. That was the year that I got my head stuck between the bars on the balcony railing. My head slipped through the bars easily enough, but my ears got in the way when I tried to pull my head back out. I remember dad saying that they would have to get an axe to cut the spindles off so I could get my head out. I was so scared. Both my parents worked on me for what seemed like an eternity until they finally managed to free my head. I remember being afraid that if they cut out the spindles, the opening would be so big that I would end up falling from our second story balcony onto the pavement below.

When my dad asked me why I had stuck my head through the bars, I said I didn’t know. Actually, when I think about it now, that was a pretty foolish question because why does any child do a thing like that other than because they wanted to see if their head would fit through. I don’t know, but to me back then, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I remember why I was out on the balcony to play in the first place. I was sent there because I had bitten the nose of the little boy who lived in the lower flat downstairs, so I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs and play.

The next article I found in the sewing box was a white lace cameo medallion that had been on one of my mother’s dresses. I remember it well. It was from a dress that she had back in the early fifties. Now the lace cameo looks tattered, wrinkled and soiled. I held onto it because if I can bring it back to its original beauty, I just may attach it to one of my own garments.

Under the lace cameo, there was an old fashioned hat pin that belonged to my maternal grandmother. She passed away when my mother was just seven years old, so I never got to meet her. I only knew her through my mother’s stories about her.

There were numerous fancy buttons that had been cut from old dresses before the dresses were turned into rags that we used to clean and wax the floors. Those were the really good old days when we did everything by hand, including stripping and waxing floors. Life was good back then. We all worked around the house and the work even had an element of fun. I used to use my two-year-old brother as a weight on the rag, or on the electric polisher to make the floors shine like glass. He was a real good kid. I also remember that when he was fourteen, he and I had the same size feet. I always had a hard time breaking in a new pair of high heels. I would give him my new shoes and after school, he would wear them around the house every day for a few weeks then give them back to me. It always worked. By the time I got them back, the shoes felt like a pair of comfortable old slippers.

I also discovered bobbins, sheet garters, rickrack, measuring tapes, umpty-nine pairs of scissors, all sizes including pinking shears and shoulder pads. There were spools of thread to match every color of the rainbow and then some. There was elastic for pants, pins, needles, thimbles, hooks and eyes and teeny tiny snaps. There were numerous zippers, all sizes and colors.

With all the treasures I found in the sewing box, one that sticks out in my mind was the tiny pile of mouse droppings. I don’t have any mice in my house and never did, so I can only assume that the mouse droppings have been there for at least twenty-eight years. Yuck! I have to wash out the sewing box and sanitize it.

Once I got into the bottom of the sewing box, I came across some lovely fabric, enough to make a dress. I also found a stack of patterns that were popular back in the seventies, I think. They were called ‘Fun-Way’ patterns. They were supposed to make sewing fun and easy with basic uncomplicated lines.

There was a small package of tiny pearl buttons left over from when my mother had made my wedding dress complete with a lace jacket and detachable train. It was such an elegant dress. I wore it proudly on my wedding day and when my younger sister was getting married, I passed it on to her. She looked as beautiful in it as I felt when I wore the dress.

A small inexpensive silver buckle caught my eye and made me laugh because I remembered how I had scandalized my mother. When I was thirteen, mom had made me a pair of corduroy slacks. The style back then was to have a short decorator belt with a buckle at the back of the pants, just below the waistline. I was thrilled when I saw that she had added the belt and buckle. I always left it open. Mom didn’t know why I did that so she asked me why I never fastened the buckle. I told her that if it was closed, it meant that I had a boyfriend and was not free. If it was open, I was free and looking for a boyfriend. Mom was scandalized and immediately cut off the belt and buckle. She was not going to have any of her daughters going around advertizing for boyfriends.

I cleaned the box and reorganized its treasured contents. I closed the sewing box to hold all my wonderful memories; memories that were buried so deep from all the distractions of living as the years flew by.

When I initially opened the sewing box, I hadn’t anticipated the flood of memories that swept over me. I thoroughly enjoyed my trip down memory lane. It was a wonderful way to spend a stormy winter day.

The End