LISA AND I----HEMMING MOTHER'S SLACKS

Written in 2000, I never knew what direction I wanted this story to go so I never finished it. So it goes all directions, kind of like my feelings about the transitions in our lives at that time.

HEMMING MOTHER'S SLACKS

We are in the spare room of our parents’ home. Not the home where we grew up, but a house in town. Mom and Dad moved from the ranch almost 15 years ago.

I drag the sewing machine cabinet out of the closet, open it, and set up the old Singer. The ancient machine with the knee pedal and no zig-zag made the move from the ranch to the little house in town.

The spare room is miniscule, the double bed leaves 12 inches on one side, about a yard at the end, and 50 some inches on the other side; most of that is taken up by the closet and the cedar chest. The top of the sewing cabinet opens to the left, forming a sewing table, this juts out over the end of the bed. This same machine in the wood cabinet, didn’t seem to take up much room in the southeast corner of the dining room at the ranch. In that corner, Lisa and I learned to sew.

We sewed for 4-H, we both became accomplished seamstress’, however, for me it was a chore, for Lisa it was therapy. Lisa sits on the bed with the pile of slacks and jeans to be hemmed, she begins measuring and pinning. We have limited pins because Mother has not sewn for years. Lisa decides the blue slacks should be done by hand. The jeans can be machine hemmed. Lisa probes the pincushion and finally finds a needle with an eye so small neither of us can thread it. We laugh. We wonder why I am the one at the machine, Lisa is the better seamstress, but mom said it wasn’t working, and I am the best mechanic.

The house is full to overflowing, with sisters, brother, brothers-in-law, sister-in-law, husbands and our children and grown-up nieces and nephews with their spouses and children. Babies to toddlers to teenagers. It is 104 degrees outside, we are alone in the basement bedroom, it is cool. Pinning and creasing by folding and crimping with our fingers because we don’t want to leave our sanctuary to find the iron.

We have come for our yearly reunion, Lisa 9 hours from the south, and I, 6 hours from the east. Our parents were 30 and 22 when they married. Helen and Carol were born early in the marriage, 8 years later, Lisa and I came along in succession, and 6 years after me, Roger. We are 20 years from oldest to youngest. Mother and Daddy are 84 and 92 and remarkably healthy.

The ranch house where we grew up, had 4 bedrooms, a huge living room, and beds in the basement. Lisa, Roger and I were still kids at home when Helen and Carol would come with husbands and 7 kids between them. There was space enough for everyone. Besides plenty of places to sleep, there was a kitchen with a breakfast nook; a large square dining room, the table could seat 12 or more and with the table folded down and against the wall, more room for kids to play and tumble and rough-house.

We loved that house and the ranch where we learned to work and play; where we had houses in trees and imaginary villages down the back lane with stores in the post pile and a school in the iron pile. We cried for our lost memories when Mother and Daddy moved to the tiny, just-right, two-bedroom house in town.

The first night of our reunion all the girls want to swim in the motel pool and stay in one room. We have two 13 year-olds, an 18 year-old, a 5 year-old, Lisa and I in our room. Lisa’s husband and my 15 year-old son opt to go to my brother’s house in the country. Lisa and I laugh and talk most of the night, we outlast the teenagers.

If Mom and Dad still lived at the ranch, no one would have dreamed of staying in a motel. We would have to do our all night gabbing in whispers and muffled giggles. Mom has very sharp ears, she would have shushed us many times, reminding us we would have to get up in the morning and work.

Sometimes still, if just a few of us come home at the same time, we crowd into the little house. The kids sleep in sleeping bags in the 5 x 10 foot room mom has made into a library/office. Or Cara, Amanda and Jenny unfold the roll-a-way bed in mom’s basement workshop. The girls call it the ‘roll-together-bed’, in the mornings, they are piled in the middle like puppies.

It does not seem possible that 15 years have gone by, that my son has no memories of the ranch. Kyle, Amy, Kelly, Drew, Ellie and Lane have made their memories of ‘going to Grandma and Grandpa’s’ in this little house on the edge of town. Mom and Dad are officially retired, but not really…

The little kids will never see Grandpa sweaty, dusty and greasy from a day in in the hayfield, or Grandma with a towel to protect her hair-do, heading out to milk her 2 or 3 cows, separate the milk, and feed her chickens and little pigs. No, they will remember Grandpa joyfully taking care of his Thoroughbred mares, the baby colts and 1 or 2 horses in training on his little acreage in town; and Grandma tending her little garden, baking her buttermilk brownies, making a doll house or miniature barn in her wood-working shop and feeding the neighborhood cats.

Mother is a survivor of the 30’s, she is the epitome of frugality. Saving tin foil, string, paper plates, recycling anything that can be recycled, saving her dish water to pour on the trees and garden.

No matter if our lessons were learned on the ranch or at the little house in town, we have all been taught by example, that work makes a person happy, the environment matters and that waste is sinful.

We all try to emulate our parents, even though we are products of the lazy and squanderous ‘90’s. Often I fall into the ways of the ‘disposable’ generation, but with every zip-lock bag I don’t wash out, or tin foil I don’t straighten and use again, I have guilty feelings of extravagance.

None of us are rich, we all have jobs, we work hard for our livings, we enjoy great finds at thrift stores, auctions and garage sales. We have pride in our work, we try to be conservative with water, we recycle, we look forward to hand-me-down clothes.

Which is the very reason we are hemming mother’s slacks. Our cousin Sharon is the same size as Mom, though a bit taller. She has given Mom a great stack of pants, all too long. Mom’s only pair of slacks to wear to the picnic tomorrow are black, it will be another 104 degree day at the park tomorrow. The light blue seersucker will be perfect.