Learning to Love Fabric

via Daily Prompt: Fabric

I learned to love fabric in my grandmother’s sewing room. There are special needles for every kind. Denim needles are sharp and thick, able to stitch through tough fabric over and over.

All fabric must be washed first. This is to make sure your cut pieces stay true to size.  Every seam must be pressed flat and neat. It’s the only time I use my iron.

Patterns are soft and fine like tissues. They are maps or a jig saw puzzle in paper that become head to to outfits in fabric.

Once she made blue polka dotted dresses for all the primary girls in the 4th of July Parade. Perfect for 8 year old girls to spin on a summer afternoon.

Yesterday I shopped the sale at the craft store. I wanted flannel for baby blankets to donate to the local children’s hospital.

I found 70’s style cotton in all kinds of pinks. They remind me of the summer blouses she made for me growing up. I think I’ll make a lap quilt to keep her warm when the desert nights get cool.

I learned to love fabric in my grandmother’s sewing room, the way her hands were sure and knowing. The way she taught me you could make a 3D world from a flat bolt of  individual strings woven together to make a whole.

At the Market

via Daily Prompt: Messy

Dragging on her boots and jacket, she wrapped her long curls into a messy half bun and shoved them inside her hood. Grabbing her book she headed out the door to the corner market, the kind with a coffee shop nestled in the corner.

Her love for espresso brought her early.  From her window seat in the corner of the corner, the sun would rise on her back. The deep warm rays becoming clean lines around her.

Twice this week she noticed him watching her. But it had been three times he had come to admire her against the window. He wanted to ask her name, offer her another espresso. Instead he only imagined the exchange.

As the sun warmed the coffee shop, she began coming her fingers through her hair. He turned to the side thinking how life was tangled just like her curls. The joke they’d make later about how they became knotted together. They would become friends first and then all at once become lovers sharing poetry and walks to the market.

A moment too late he stood.

She was gone just like the words he’d left  unspoken.

 

 

 

Coincidence

Today I ordered test prep books for graduate school

In the last four days I have walked at commencement and attended my daughters college orientation.

In this moment our lives are parallel except for generational outlook. She has all the time in the world, I am certain I can arrange what I have left

Each decade I think I have it figured out only to realize the losses feel greater and time feels shorter

I started running again this morning after one tiny foot bone cracked during an ankle sprain.  I’ve been on the sideline for weeks.

I was feeling pretty good until the Facebook name game ended with my looks fading but my spirit shining through.

Tomorrow I have an interview for a job I will hate as much as the one I already have. Is it coincidence that I cut all my hair and gained twenty pounds in the months leading up to this?

 

 

On Relationships

I was running along the canal practicing race pace when my phone rang. I don’t get phone calls so I assumed the worse and slowed to answer it.

It was my mother sobbing, something about her mother forcing her to move out and her having nowhere to take her dog. She was always out of reach growing up. We’ve only been friends once during my lifetime, when my oldest children were young.

While she cried and threatened to live in only a tent and freeze to death, I remembered my Runkeeper was still on. I was never getting this ten minutes back literally, or figuratively.

I told my older daughter later that day, only half serious when I said freezing to death would be two birds, one stone. She gave a deep sigh and called me Savage. I tell my husband that she is like a stove missing the indicator light. You just never know when you are setting yourself up for a burn. Better to just leave the kitchen.

I woke up the next day thinking about her sad weeping, how she told me she didn’t understand why she could never have a relationship with her mother.

My response before she hung up being, “Yep, I wouldn’t know anything about that…”

Via The Daily Post