Was it a good thing or a bad thing that my father could sew?
When he was a little boy, my father had rheumatic fever. His mother was hard-pressed to keep him quiet
and avoid physical activity.
Grandma had been a tailor…not just an accomplished seamstress…but
a tailor. Prior to her marriage, she
worked at a clothing company that made men’s suits. When sewing for the family, she even made her
own patterns. She would take
measurements and trace out a pattern on newspaper. Due to her skills, I never had a store-bought
winter coat until I was in 7th grade. Also due to her skills, in desperation to keep
my dad inactive, she taught him to sew.
As a sickly child unable to rough house with the boys, he made
clothes for his sisters’ dolls. As an
adult, he could sew on his own buttons and do minor repairs. After my mother passed away, the problem with
this emerged.
Dad never had very good fashion sense. Years of my mother “dressing” him didn’t give
him the picture. After she passed, he
decided that she had encouraged him to wear his slacks longer than he thought
they should be. He was living with us
after she departed, so one day when I arrived home from work, he announced that
he had shortened all of his slacks. I
was horrified when I saw the results. He
had carefully hemmed his slacks into “high water” position.
So attired, he forged out into the world, happy with his
accomplishment and thinking he looked great.
I decided this was not a battle I wished to fight. I had enough trouble getting him to go to the
barber instead of doing a hatchet job on his own hair.
I hope my mother doesn’t scold me when I see her in
heaven. I think she will shrug it off
and be as glad to see me, as I am to see her.
