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For various trivial reasons, there are a number of straight seams that need to be sewn in our household. An intentionally too-low shower curtain rod, and unintentionally too-large pillowcases in our favorite sheet set are the main culprits. But you never know...one day, there could be a trouser hem. Life is full of surprises.
I have found myself sheepishly asking my tailor for these very simple fixes over the years, every time secretly thinking "I really should be able to do this myself." After all, my mother taught me to sew when I was in 5th grade, when I was obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder, and needed a gingham dress and matching sunbonnet of my very own.
So, if I could make (or help make) a dress at the tender age of ten or eleven, surely it's re-learnable! Surely, I can sew a straight seam with all my acquired worldly wisdom over the past....(inaudible) decades.
A month or so ago, after our old sheets disintegrated, we decided to splurge and buy TWO new sets! So now I had to take in four pillowcases, carefully providing my tailor with one she had shortened/narrowed from Queen to Standard years ago, so all she had to do was copy that one. Seemed simple. When I got them home, I realized she had only shortened them, rather than also reducing their width. Steven took one look at them and said "Well, she needs to fix them!" Steven is from Straight-Forward-Landia. I am from Never-Make-A-Fuss-Landia.
I considered taking them to someone else and just re-paying for the whole job, but I jammed some steel into my spine, and went back to request she do the additional seams. Now, English is not her strength. Tailoring is! She's great! But English, not so much. So I probably only made vague gestures when I dropped them off, assuming she'd know I meant "Match this in every way." She had not assumed that. She flew into a snit. I flew into a snit. She refused to do the additional seams for anything less than the full amount she'd charged before. I agreed, feeling like a sucker, snitted my way out the door, then snitted myself right back in, told her I'd changed my mind, and marched my too-wide pillowcases right back home, where they mocked me from the top of the dresser for a week or so, until I broke down and (drumroll please) bought my very own sewing machine! Which sat in its box, mocking me, for another week, while I realized how utterly intimidated I was by this theoretically simple task.
A task with which I also, apparently, have some additional issues.
In addition to being part of the first U.S. generation to earn less that their parents (woo hoo!), I also squeezed into a gap in history between "typing is for secretaries, and I ain't gonna be no secretary" and "Oh wait, EVERYONE is gonna have one of these computer thingies, and we'll do EVERYTHING on it?" My indignant, resentful left-shoulder demon steered me furiously out of the path of "women's work," and I have to admit, it has never completely left me alone.
(I feel that I should name that left-shoulder demon. Groucho seems indignant and resentful.)
((I guess the corresponding rational, clear-eyed right-shoulder dweller needs a name, too. Sigh. Let's go with Gracie.))
I sometimes have complicated feelings about what being a woman means in our society, as lucky as I feel to be one. I chafe at the things we women have to do biologically, and I positively bristle at the societal restrictions that typically accompany our biological destiny. Perhaps women who want to be mothers have a more complicated, nuanced point of view about this. They certainly have a tougher job than me, and I can't possibly presume to speak for them. But even the juiciest, most delicious Earth-Mama of them all, on a weepy day when her tits are killing her, and everything from her navel to her inner thighs feels like it's rotting from the PMS, but who still shoulders the majority of the household duties and other invisible work both at home and in the office... even Earth-Mama gotta have her bad days. Maybe it's just Groucho talking.
(And then on top of it all, there are laws, laws preventing us from having 100% control over what happens to these bodies of burden!? Rise up, Sisters. Broomsticks at dawn. Ahem. Poor sewing machine. It's just trying to save me a few bucks at the tailor's, not foment a revolution.)
Somewhere along the way, my scout-like enthusiasm for knowing how to do a super useful thing like sewing got dampened by... an irrational fear of agreeing to be a woman in the world as it is, I guess. Honestly, you'd think there weren't real challenges in my life, with the number of additional ones I dreamed up for myself. Where were you, Gracie?
But. There is one thing I cannot abide, and that's not having a jigsaw puzzle to do. And there isn't room on the table for both the sewing machine and the puzzle.
So. I took the machine out of its box. After three days of moving it to various places around the apartment (dining table, coffee table, arm-chair, floor), and ignoring it, I finally set about to wind a bobbin. I'd watched an instructional video; read the manual and everything. Now in front of a finally plugged-in machine, with threading instructions finally edging out angst about gender roles in my head, I clicked the bobbin winder into place, and put the pedal to the metal. (Or, nervously nudged my bare toe onto the plastic pedal and hoped not to kill myself or break everything.)
Dear reader, I wound a bobbin! It was bottom heavy, like the video had cautioned, so I cavalierly THREW AWAY yards of the 50 cent thread purchased by my mother... in the 80s maybe? and tried again. It worked! Clearly a superhero, I tried my luck threading the top bit, then with 17 deep breaths, and 27 re-readings of the instructions, I folded a dish towel in half, and across it...sewed a straight line! I was flushed with triumph.
So, I did the only sensible thing, and packed it away immediately, to the loft this time, where it mocked me for an additional two weeks until...last Saturday, the time had come.
I watched a video. I measured. I marked. I waited until Steven left the room because I could not possibly endure an audience. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pajama pants. And then... I HEMMED THE DAMN PILLOWCASES! I used two different types of stitches! I remembered to cut the excess from the correct side, instead of completely destroying them!
Steven and I rushed to the bed, put the pillowcases on, and beheld... normal, correctly-sized pillows. Unremarkable...except to me. (Well, to us. He witnessed me pushing that rock up that hill.) I gazed for a full minute, before calmly going to the closet to retrieve my next jigsaw.
Today, 8 days before the midterms, Steven surprised me with t-shirts. Mine says My Body, My Vote, and his says Vote Like It's 1973. I could weep. The man knows how to pick a present. They're unisex, so mine is a bit shapeless, but when I rolled up the sleeves it looked much better. I thought...I could hem them! It's a good next project for my sewing machine and me. (Remember Ladies, even when we take to the streets in fury, it helps to be pretty. And to smile.) ((Alright, simmer down, Groucho.))
Come on, Gracie.
We'll show 'em women's work.
