Dirty Secrets

Greetings Dear Ones!

The scissors grinder came today.  Yes, the scissors grinder! There is a youngish man who comes to town and goes door to door to sharpen our scissors for us.  I’m not sure if he comes because he remembers our scissors must be getting dull by now, or if he simply runs out of money and heads back out on his route to get some, as there is no apparent schedule what-so-ever but our scissors are forever getting more dull and it’s always a great delight when he shows up.  I hand over my nippers, embroidery scissors, and shears with deep gratitude that such a useful and charming traditional skill still exists.  Here on Main Street U.S.A., we have a traveling scissors grinder AND our very own cobbler, down the street from our little tailoring shop.  (Sigh...) It’s just like Disney, only with more poo.  Significantly more poo.

Is it too soon to talk about the poo?  This is only week 6 of this blog.  My inner critic, whom I call “Prudence Thimbleton,” purses her lips sternly and says “No, for pity’s sake, never tell them about the poo, you daft girl!”  “But, they want to know the secrets of a seamstress” I say to her, “those secrets involve poo!  I think that secretly, they want  to know about the poo!” “Rubbish,” she snorts with contempt. “No one wants to know about poo.”

So, dear reader, if you secretly want to know about the poo, read on.  If not, I’ll thank you for getting this far and urge you to turn back now and tune in next week, when I promise, there will be no more poo. (I think.)

For the most part, sewing is a pretty safe job, without a lot of hazards. There are the repeated and inevitable pin-pricks and burnings with the iron, but unless one happens to run her finger under the running needle on the machine (which happens, but not often) the risk of injury is not that serious.  There is, however, an undeniable “gross” factor. Most people don’t know that every time we open a seam body dirt falls out.  If the garment is an old one, there can be so much debris falling out, that we have to sweep the table and roll the inside of the seam with a sticky roll of tape to clean it up before we can work on it. This debris is made chiefly of dead skin and smells awful when you iron it.  I often wonder what a trained sommelier would think if he were presented with such a bouquet: “hmm… under the first wave of crud, I’m getting lily-scented bath powder and a splash of cat urine…”

I take a pair of black trousers from the rack and begin working on taking in the waist for an elderly man who is shrinking.  They have been hanging at the back of the rack for nearly a month.  His daughter, who brought them in, said there was no particular rush for these trousers and so they kept getting pushed to the back of the queue because of prom “emergencies.”  Finally, it is his turn.  I work quite happily for several moments, removing the waistband lining, marking the measurements with chalk.  I often daydream while I work; humming fiddle tunes in my head, making grocery lists, composing vitriolic letters to fashion designers… In my half-present daze, I become dimly aware of a vague farmyard kind of odor.  Quickly, I check my shoes, thinking I have stepped in poop of some kind. Living where I do, with three incontinent Jack Russells, free-range chickens, and a herd of sheep, it is more likely than not that I am the culprit who is bearing some form of feces on my feet at any given moment. Nothing.  I sigh and consider it no further.  Many older garments have their own odors that are released when we open them.  What are a gentleman’s pants but a big fart-filter anyway?  I continue humming blithely. But when I iron the seam in the back of the trousers an intense cloud of steam prompts me to peer more closely inside the crotch. Yep… You guessed it.  It must have dried out completely in the month it hung on the rack but the steam revived it instantly. I gag and put the trousers in a plastic bag and send them for cleaning before any more can be done to them. 

I, as used to dung as I am, used to be incredulous that a customer would bring them in, in that state, without laundering them first.  (Am I seriously the first person to realize there is a now steaming turd baked into this garment?) However, discovering excrement in garments happens with depressing regularity in a tailoring shop. I wonder sympathetically about what the story I will hear when I have to explain the cleaning sur-charge to the owner. I don't judge people on their shit. No Way!  I just think back to a time when my life was “unmanageable” and how the truth was that I actually thought, as this poor soul might, that I was managing.  It’s amazing how unaware of shit we can be.

My pack of rescued Jack Russells was forever dropping little doggie bombs on the carpets in the house.  Adopted as adults, they had never been properly housebroken, which probably explains why they were up for adoption in the first place! (I am not actually certain it is even possible to house break a Jack Russell.) Our carpets, darkly patterned, disguised these little landmines perfectly.  One trod barefoot at his or her own risk.  The children and I were watchful about checking for them and putting the dogs out regularly but if I left the house for any length of time, say to walk to the mailbox at the end of the driveway and back, an accident would happen.  Invariably, the one who stepped in it would be my former husband, who would erupt in total fury and threaten to make sporrans out of them all.  Nothing set him off like obliviously treading a footprint of shit all through the house like a foot-shaped rubber stamp, each impression getting smaller and fainter but no less fragrant.  Since I could neither train the dogs to do their business outside, nor train the husband to look where he stepped, I had become hyper vigilant about scanning for poop and disposing of it before anyone knew about it.  Denial meant Peace, when I could pull it off.  

One day, I spied a dried lump near the leg of a chair just as I heard him walking down the hall.  Any minute, he would enter the room, catch me cleaning up, and begin his manifesto on why all Jack Russells need to be exterminated.  I took a tissue from my sweater pocket, grabbed the tiny lump, swiftly tucked it back in the pocket, and strode quickly to the kitchen to dispose of it.  Unfortunately, when I got to the kitchen, given my severe Attention Deficit Disorder, I was immediately distracted by the resident eight-year-old trying to climb the counter to reach a glass off the highest shelf.   

I wore that cardigan for the next three days.  Occasionally, I would smell a waft of something questionable, that would send me carpet scanning and evicting all the dogs outside for a potty break, but I never found anything on shoe or carpet.  The vigilance was paying off, so I thought.

I don’t launder hand-knit, bulky wool jumpers very often, so it might have been months before I realized what was in that pocket. But a few days later, at swim team practice, a little four-year-old girl was running up the stairs and fell and put her tooth through her lip. As blood mixed with howls, all the mothers began searching their pockets for clean tissues.  I found mine immediately.  It was NOT clean.  As I stared in horror at what was in my hand, I could not believe that my life had devolved to a place of such distraction, dishonesty, and chaos that I could carry dog shite in my pocket for four days straight and have NO IDEA.

This is precisely what the daughter says when she comes to collect her elderly father’s trousers.  “I had no idea!” she sniffs sadly when we inform her of the extra charge for cleaning. “He has just been moved to a nursing home.  He has dementia and is losing track of things.”  (Yes, things like whether he has done his poopy on the potty or in his own pants.)  “I drove around with those pants in my car for a week. I had no idea…”  I do my best to reassure her. "Honey, you have no idea how much I get that!"

Recently, a friend said admiringly, “Nancy, you really turned your life around and got your shit together.” She wasn’t actually talking about real poo, but in my case the metaphor works either way. “Yes,” I admitted gratefully, “It might be together but it’s still just shit. We all have it, don't we?"  We laughed. Today, poo is more likely on my shoes than in my pockets and it’s not my own (yet). It’s a temporary victory but I’ll take it.   

Despite its hazards, I love my job.  Since Eve put apples on the menu, being a Seamstress has been the most Human of all occupations—to mask our shame through the labors of love and linen. There is something hilarious and tragic in the fact that No Other Species on the planet makes for itself a pair of fine, wool-polyester blend pants and then craps in them.  We may clothe our nakedness in all sorts of fabric and frippery but at the end of the day we are all very Natural Beings only temporarily in charge of our own poop.   May we be human and Humane.   Let those of us in clean pants lovingly assist those who aren’t!

Be well, my dear ones, and do Good Work!

Yours aye,

Nancy

The Work of Our Hands

Greetings Dear Ones!

I am in Ireland this week! On a brief holiday from stitching prom gowns and formal wear to attend an actual wedding myself,  in Connamara. For a change, I will be seeing a wedding gown from the outside, not the inside! As we drive up the coast, my breath escapes me over and over as I look at the miles of grey stone walls lacing the countryside, defining the ancient boundaries. I take any chance I get to get out and place my hands on them, feeling where other unseen hands once gripped them and placed them so long ago. All around, there is a Silent Testament, echoing beneath the constant wind, to countless generations of laborers who used a temporary strength of sinew to lift and shift these stones, before they themselves went to sleep in the ground from whence these very rocks came. I look at my hands, warm and living on the lichen, and think of the work of our hands...

Back in the USA, Mother’s Day is coming up and I am thinking of growing out my claws and painting them red.  I almost never varnish my nails but when I think of all that my hands accomplish in a year—knitting, baking, sewing, building things on my little homestead, playing music, tending to my children and animals—I think about decorating these silent little servants, just for one day, and letting them rest.  Well, I think about it, anyway. The truth of it is that no amount of lacquer would survive a day of my life. But it's a great thought and every Mother's Day,  I think back to meeting a special stranger nearly ten years ago now, who gave me the idea:

We are somewhere in Georgia or Florida. I am taking a long bus journey on a grey-hound bus.  My seat companion is an elegant black woman, vibrantly dressed in bold colors, with stunningly beautiful locks of elaborately twisted hair piled on her head.  She is much larger, taller, and grander than I; in every way her Presence, like her luggage, takes up a lot more room than mine.  I slump next to her feeling like one of those pale vegetables in the grocery store in winter time—an insipid cucumber, perhaps, while she is a luscious, vine-ripened tomato with heavy eye liner.  Her glossy lips and long nails gleam blood red.  Her fragrance—a mix of perfume and Confidence—envelops our seat.  She is prosperous. Assured.  I rarely go anywhere without half a sock in my pocket so I get out my knitting, taking care not to bump the armrest, and begin to unravel the yarn.  As my fingers feel quietly for the points of the needles and begin stitching, I sneak a sideways glance at my companion’s hands. They are impressively beautiful, adorned by gold rings with gems exactly the right scale to show off her long, graceful fingers.

Hands fascinate me.  I can be very attracted to or utterly repelled someone just by the shape of his hands or how she uses them in conversation.  Are the fingers strong and graceful? Is he flapping them about like a baby penguin?  Are the nails long and dirty? Or bitten to nubs? While not a palmist in any way, hands tell me a lot about a person.  I watch how people touch things, how they absentmindedly stroke their own faces, how they gesture.  I see how they are ornamented with scars, tattoos, jewelry, or nail polish. I especially love to observe hands at play on a musical instrument, with lives of their own, momentarily freed from the conscious direction of a brain.  The condition and length of the nails tells me about how this person cares for himself.

She notices me looking at her hands and smiles. 

          “Your hands are like a work of art,” I say, before I can stop myself from uttering something so embarrassing.

          “Yes!” she nods affirmatively. “It is so. I do it on purpose. I never paint my nails any other color. Ever.” She is loudly emphatic, like it's a testimony.

          “Well, it’s a fabulous color on you,” I say.

          “I know,” she admits. “But that is not the reason I do it. I have my own reason.”  She smiles darkly.  It is a clear invitation I simply have to take.

          “Tell me more,” I say.  And as if she has been waiting dramatically in the wings for her cue to begin the performance, she sweeps forward in her seat and launches into the kind of monologue I live for on long bus rides: 

“Years ago, when my man left me with four babies to feed and no house, no money, no job, I started growing these nails and I painted them blood red.  I used to crawl into bed with my little babies and scratch them to sleep. Very gently, mind you! I whispered that their mama was secretly a tigress, not just a woman--being a woman was just my disguise and these were my claws to prove it.  ‘Do you see this red?’ I asked them, ‘do you SEE this red?’ This red is the blood of anyone who ever try to hurt you, ever.  I will LEAP on them and my tiger self will SLASH them to ribbons with these claws.” She clawed suddenly at the air with a savagery that startled me. Then, the hands fluttered in disguised meekness to rest in her lap again, like obedient house pets.   “It helped them feel safe.  It helped me feel safe too,” she continued, pleased to have seen the whites of my eyes.  “Every mother’s day, I make my children rub lotion into these hands.  I say ‘Children, these hands work all year for you! They scrape and clean, and work and cook, and do all sorts of things for you. Now you rub your Mama’s claws and thank them for keeping you safe and fed.’ And they do.  Every year, I sit in a chair and hold out these hands and make my children rub them.  It feels so good.  Someday, they gonna hold my hands as I die.  They’ll be different hands then—all small and wrinkled, no power left in the Claw—and I want them to remember my hands strong. I want them to see the changes year by year.  I want them to look at they own hands and think what they can DO in this world. Everybody gotta DO something in this world, to make it a better place.” She paused and looked over at my hands, which, of course, were knitting.  My pale, naked fingers with their short, unvarnished nails, were hopping deftly over the yarn like school girls playing Chinese jump rope at recess. She watched me in silence for a moment.  “My hands can’t do what yours are doing,” she said, flatly. She looked at me sideways, seeming to Decide something, and smirked, “but then, you ain’t no tigress neither!”  We both laughed. 

Every Mother’s Day, I think of that Magnificent stranger on that bus and I wonder if her children are still rubbing her claws.  I hope so! Since that bus ride, my own claws have built a split-rail fence for the sheep, built a small stone wall and two sheds, massaged an endless parade of aching backs, and earned me a living as a seamstress. They have knitted countless pairs of socks, made countless batches of scones and oatcakes, and scooped innumerable canine turds off carpets.  Since that bus ride, my claws have ceased to wear a wedding band and I have discovered my inner Tigress.  My hands are thicker now with age, and they ache a little some days but they are the part of my body I am most grateful for. 

Today, as I rest these hands on the ancient walls of my ancestors, I think of that Shaker phrase "Hands to work, hearts to God," and the psalm "Give us the work of our hands Lord, give us the work of our hands..." I send silent prayers out to all the dear Mothers--those giving their hands and hearts to nurturing, protecting, teaching and serving the young; those who get up, aching and weary, to Do What Must be Done for the innocent and dependent; who carry children in their hearts, whether they carried them in their bodies or not. I think about how scared we are at times and how only our own stories can console us, as we gently scratch small backs in the dark.   I think about my own mother's strong hands kneading our daily bread as I was growing up, and about how it felt to hold my grandmother's weakened, tiny bird claws the day she died. The stranger on the bus was right. Our hands and our powers change over time.  It is right for us to honor both the hands and those changes, which make the spaces necessary for us to step forward and offer our own hands in their place.  Our Mother's hands have shaped and placed the living stones that will continue to build the world in new and hopeful ways.  And whether we are ancient forgotten stone mason,  modern mother, or frazzled seamstress--when our weary rest comes at last, what do we leave to endure behind us, long after we are gone?  Where is our love made visible? In the work of our hands.

Be well, dear friends, and do good work! 

Yours aye, 

Nancy

Fits for Toddlers

Hello my Dearies!

What is a fairytale wedding without a miniature prince and princess who have skipped their naps and are strung out on gummi bears? I’m not talking about the grandparents of the groom here. Toddlers posing as trolls in party-gear are all the rage this season.  Can’t afford your very own magical troll?  Why not ask your sister’s two-year-old to wear ten yards of tulle for a whole afternoon (and keep it clean for pictures) and see how that goes?

I love children.  I adore playing music with them and entertaining them with games and stories and nursery rhymes.  But given the choice between building a split-rail fence by hand in rock-studded New England soil and fitting someone under four for formal wear, I’d rather tackle the fence any day! Having done both, I know which one will have you crawling for the Advil faster. Now, before you start moistening your pens and iPads for retort, let me just state right from the beginning that this essay is about Other People’s Toddlers, not yours, bless their hearts.  Yours, it is universally acknowledged, are perfect little cherubs who would NEVER behave as the Purely Hypothetical toddlers in this story! 

You may not know this but a professional seamstress, when working with a toddler, follows very strict Industry Standards, which are adhered to at every fitting. The sequence goes something like this:

1.     First, the toddler flat out Refuses to try on the garment in question. 

2.     A wrestling match ensues, pitting several full-grown adults against a twenty to thirty-five pound being who smells vaguely of applesauce and urine.  The adults will be injured.

3.     At some point in the proceedings, someone naked notices the mirror and begins licking it and making funny faces.  This is usually the toddler, but not always.

4.     Having squeezed the Toddler into the clothing against his/her will, it is time to freak out about the pins.  Putting a pin in clothing while they are wearing it is very traumatic for some children who have been to a doctor and know what shots are all about.  There is no convincing them that the needles go in the clothes only and that they won’t hurt. They have been lied to before.

5.     There is much screeching, weeping, and beseeching. The ensuing Negotiations by all parties make the Treaty of Paris look like an afterthought.

6.     The now well-dressed child commences climbing from the parent’s hand to hand to hand like an enormous hamster, refusing to stay put until you threaten to brandish the pins again.

7.     At some point, the seamstress will thank her Higher Power that there is not a readily available fifth of gin on hand under her desk.

8.     Once everyone is thoroughly exhausted and you announce it is All Over, (whether you have achieved any measurements or not doesn’t matter anymore)—that is the toddler’s cue to flat out Refuse to take off the garment.

9.     Enormous grief ensues at the prospect of leaving behind this article of clothing so it may be fixed.  Neither the toddler nor the seamstress wants this to happen.

Do you think I am kidding?  Well, I will totally Make Up the following story, to go with the above Fun Facts in order to illustrate my point:

It’s Tuesday. I am working on a giant, tiny dress—probably about a size 4 but it needs to be remade into a size 2(ish).  I call it the giant tiny dress because it is for a toddler but it takes up the whole of my work station with its billowing skirts and underskirts and large rosettes made of fabric.  I have removed all the piping around the neck, resized the armpit and neck area, taken up the shoulders, and carefully reconstructed all the roses and piping again by hand.  It looks perfect.  It is white with silver accents and looks like a miniature bridal gown.   The little girl wearing it is going to be a flower girl in her aunt’s wedding.  This is her mother’s dress that she herself wore as a flower girl in a wedding twenty-five years ago.  Despite its vintage, it has been beautifully preserved and is still a pristine white.  A part of me has fallen in love with this dress—I often fall in love with clothing I am working on, especially older clothing that seems to have some sort of “soul” about it.   I have connected to this dress emotionally in a way that I cannot explain.  I cannot wait to see how it looks on the little girl when she comes in.  I was not present at the original fitting so I have no idea what she looks like.  I picture some sort of angelic being… (Looking just like YOUR favorite toddler, of course!)   

The back door bangs open and a vividly tattooed woman in rolled up jeans and flip-flops begins dragging a screaming toddler down the aisle to the dressing room. “Sorry we are late!” she bellows, “NOT having an easy morning, are we my love,” she says, looking down at the grubbiest child I have ever seen.  Snot is running out of both nostrils and across her cheeks, making clean streaks through the veneer of dirt on her skin.  She is in a full diaper, sans shoes, and wearing a shirt she clearly uses primarily for straining food.  She is arching her back and alternately stamping and dangling from her mother’s arm like a baby chimpanzee.  The noises she is making are indistinguishable from those of a zoo animal as she bites her mother on the wrist.  Her hair, the most unlovely shade of “dirty blonde”, because it is literally SO dirty is standing up in a six inch mat all over her head.  I peer a little closer, expecting to see horns beneath the crusty curls.   Wearily, a grandmother trails in from the parking lot, limping.

“Come on, honey,” she says, “let’s try your pretty dress on so that we can see if it fits you. ” The child attempts to kick her.  They grab the girl and start trying to squeeze her into the dress I most reluctantly hand them.  She is behaving like a mean drunk on a Friday night, fighting with her feet because her arms are pinned by the grandmother.  They try to get her in from the top but her grubby feet are too fast and granny gets winded by a well-timed hip-check to the solar plexus.  They give up and try to pull the dress over her head, temporarily blinding her with clouds of fluffy tulle.  She emerges spitting, as if she has just been plunged through foam in a bubble bath.  Both women grunt heavily as they pin her to the floor to button her.  Finally, they release her and jump back, like wild-life scientists on a nature program who have just tagged a baby crocodile.  She staggers to her feet, momentarily stunned. She blinks.  She cocks her head, eyes wide, all rage instantly arrested, as she sees something in the mirror.  She edges towards herself, mirror hands reaching to touch real hands.  A soft coo escapes her spittled lips.  She is smitten.  She coos again. “Ahhhhhh….” She smiles.  The girl in the mirror smiles too.  All four hands leave each other’s touch to smooth their respective dresses. She turns a little, admiring every angle of herself.  She spins. She laughs.  Tantrum transformed.  Sometimes it’s just all about the Right Dress, eh? Proof that the right fit brings out the inner Princess in us all! 

(Let’s just leave the story right there, with the smiling angel in the mirror and not talk about what happened when we told her she had to take that pretty dress off…)

Not all toddler fittings are so dramatic, mind you. A three-year-old gentleman I have the pleasure of waiting on looks calmly down at me as I pin his trouser hem and announces, “You can come to my birthday party.”

           “Oh, why thank you!” I chirp. “How old will you be?”

           “I’m going to be four,” he says.  “Not today, but Someday.  And you can come.”

“That’s very kind of you,” I say, continuing to slip pins into his shirt without him noticing.  “I’d be delighted! But what if I don’t know anyone there? Who else are you inviting?”

“Oh,” he replies airily, “My brother will be there.  He’s called Daniel.  And my Grandpa will be there.  He’s called Grandpa.  He’s my favorite. And his favorite cake is cake.”

“Mine too,” I say. “I love any cake that is a cake.”

“Yes,” he nods seriously, “There is going to be cake because it is going to be a birthday. We could eat the cake in the tree-house.  I have a tree-house.  It’s an up house.  You need to climb a ladder to get to it.  It’s not a down house, like my real house, on the ground.  But…” he sighs heavily at this point, “it’s not up high because of alligators.  They have to live in the zoo. There are no alligators under the tree house.” He tries to disguise his disappointment.  “Only be-tend ones.”

It’s my own privately held opinion that toddlers should be allowed to be feral at weddings—free to run riot with their cousins, eating purloined olives off each fingertip, and hiding from Great Aunt Margaret’s whiskery smooches.  Their clothes should be the same color as the hill they will be rolling down all afternoon. But if you insist on dressing them up in party frocks and posing them for photos, well, I am here for you--pins, patience, and Advil in hand.  And I DO love them truly (the toddlers, that is),  especially yours.

Be Well and do good work!

Yours aye,

Nancy

In Danger of Being Magnificent

Hello my Dearies!

It's Wedding time. A gorgeous woman is standing in the dressing room.  From both mirrors and across her face beams a radiant energy that makes the very air buzz.  She is not just large, she is larger than life.  She is not just black—her polished ebony skin gleams darkly in the light.  Her head is piled with tiny glossy braids that sweep in circles like an upside-down basket on her head. Her laugh burbles easily from her open throat as she gazes joyfully at her wife-to-be.  I finish making a few adjustments to a dress that fits her like a second skin and step back.  We all agree.  She is Magnificent!

They leave the shop together, smiling, and suddenly everything seems a little dimmer.  I slip on my thimble and pick up a threaded needle and wonder what it takes to be Magnificent like that.  For a moment, I think "If only I was black,  and curvy, and a lesbian.  Those lucky big, black, lesbians! Magnificence comes so easily for them.  Having what the Scots call “peely-wally” sallow skin and frizzy red hair that refuses to behave—that’s got to be what’s holding me back."  

The bell on the door rings and a white woman in her mid-seventies comes in.  Her grey hair is shaved closed to her head and her ears bob with multiple earrings.  She is tall, with large, expressive hands that flutter over her boldly-colored flowing clothes as she describes how she wants her Grandmother-of-the-Groom gown to fit.  She is comfortable.  She moves gracefully, laughs easily.  The deep lines around her kind eyes make it look like she is smiling all the time.  When she leaves the shop, I slump back in my chair.  Maybe I don’t have to be black or lesbian to be Magnificent after all!  I just have to wait until I am seventy and then shave my head.  (That certainly will solve the frizzy red hair situation.)

My favorite crabby person comes in.  She is in her mid-sixties and Jewish, with grown children who never call her.  She too is Magnificent.  I see right through her fabulous crabbiness in an instant.  She is just extremely knowledgeable and unappreciated, perhaps even misunderstood, and sometimes her crankiness intimidates people.  She leaves and I think if I had been born Jewish I might have a shot at being Magnificent (I am already frequently misunderstood and well on my way to being crabby).   

What it is that makes three such completely different people be so Magnificent?  You might think I am an indiscriminate person--that I just think every person I meet is Magnificent.  Not so. I try not to judge, but when I do, I judge very stringently.  Every person is Loveable, to be sure, but very few people earn my designation of Magnificent.   Most of us are just merely in Danger of being Magnificent.  But just when we are about to risk something big, we lower the hemline, raise the neckline, wear something prudent and cautious and beige and then shuffle anonymously to a seat in the shadows at the back of the room. (Not that I am anti-modesty, mind you!  Ironically, modest clothing is often the most alluring. Here in New England, during the three months a year we don’t wear parkas, it’s best to keep things covered anyway, or at least disguised with some well-placed shrubbery!)  In danger of being Magnificent,  we stay quiet.  We stay neutral.  We don’t want to cause a ruckus or a fuss. We don’t embody Joy.  Our clothes are the food-smeared caves where we hide, as we roam Wallmart in slippers, looking for snacks.

These women I call Magnificent are not so because they don’t have problems.  EVERY customer has a problem—that’s how I come to meet them in the first place.   Sometimes the problem is with an article of clothing that is not behaving.  Sometimes the problem is with him or herself.  Sometimes it is with the fashion industry and its cock-a-mamie attempts to get us all to resemble trout.  For these women, the problem is definitely NOT them. They blame the clothes, not themselves.  And they know how to ask for help. Once the alterations are finished, they don’t just wear their garments—they Present them.  Their "outfits" represent "inner-fits" and are simply the costumes required for dramas in which they are not afraid to star.

Some women just don’t get this.  They look in the mirror with defeated sighs and say “I really need to lose some weight.  I really want to wear this (skirt, dress, hideous lemon leotard) for some occasion (wedding, funeral, family reunion where weird Uncle Larry is going to eat all the cheese balls again).  I always protest and say “Change the clothes, dear heart, not you!"  Like a dog-trainer, I show the customer how to take control of the situation by shaking her pants and saying “you naughty pants!  Shame on you!  How dare you make this woman’s bum look big!”  (Sometimes, the pants snarl back “hey!  It’s not MY fault that cow likes pumpkin lattes! Don’t blame me!” Pants are vicious creatures sometimes, especially when they use the voice of our own savage inner critics.)  Fine if you want to lose weight for health reasons or to feel more energetic, just don't let that uppity blouse from Ralph Lauren try to be the boss of You. But really, it’s not about the actual size of your bum at all.  It’s about the size of the woman inside that bum that counts. I can tell by how these women enter the shop that they are terrified of being Magnificent.  They approach timidly, apologetically.  They are sorry they have this dress, sorry they aren’t the right size, sorry to bother us, sorry for living.  They meekly follow me to the dressing room, where their shoulders sag like bent hangers and their clothes dangle forlornly, like laundry left on the clothesline after a rain.  

Being Magnificent is totally dangerous.  It carries us to the edge of our discomfort.  It exposes. It risks.  The easiest thing to do is to stay home dressed as an amorphous blob under a fluffy bathrobe and a pair of sweat pants.  (Sweat pants—ew! Even then very name tells you they are NOT magnificent.   Though if your wear them to a gym, where they belong, and actually sweat in them on a regular basis, well, you will become very strong, which is a good piece of being Magnificent.)  The much harder thing is to claim your own femininity or masculinity and dress yourself in a way that defines not just who you are right now but who you want to be, moving forward, as your roles evolve.  What is fun for you to wear? What colors do you love? What makes you feel comfortable, vibrant, ready to Live? Do you really want to wear four-inch stilletoes to the prom? Or would you be happier in some blinged-out keds?

Being Magnificent has nothing to do with what size, shape, or color you are.  Trust me, I study this species close up during my daily dressing room safaris.  Right now, it’s also Prom Season and there is an endless parade of physical youth and perfection in the dressing room. I have seen elegant creatures with long, sylph-like limbs, pert noses, and hair tumbling in silky waterfalls down their backs who look hollow, somehow uninhabited—as if they are less than the sum of the parts they have assembled under all that chiffon.  They are tightly furled, un-bloomed. The runways are full of these long-legged things held up as the icons of beauty on every magazine cover.  Well, they ARE beautiful.  They are just not Magnificent.  Not yet.  There is a difference.

Women who are truly Magnificent are not born that way.  It takes a while, and some significant suffering, like the growth of a pearl in an oyster. (Young people can be Magnificent too, but it's rare--and  only if they have overcome something big.)  A woman over seventy has had to live through a thing or two, not the least of which are multiple eras of bell-bottomed pants and line-backer shoulder pads.  These women have stopped accepting the dictates of arbitrary fashion designers who think we need to consign ourselves to a lifetime of lean cuisine and stevia to conform and have begun to exercise their own free will. Which is pretty much how this whole “wearing clothes” thing got started, if you will recall! How much more dangerous can you get?

There is a price to pay for being Magnificent.  No doubt about it.  People will notice you.  People will talk about you.  People will listen to you.   Frizzy red-haired people might seriously be tempted to shave their heads upon meeting you.  Some people will admire you and some people definitely will not like you. That’s a frightful amount of responsibility, to be sure.  Most of the time, my own personal fashion focus consists of making sure there is no animal dung on my shoes, no hay in my pockets, and that the hem of my skirt is not inadvertently tucked into my waistband—like that time I unwittingly mooned half of High Street before a polite stranger clued me in.  Still, I admire these Mavens of Magnificence who have the courage to inhabit their whole selves, who understand that sheer radiance will triumph over any kind of genetics, race, or creed, who know that Happiness is the best make-up ever.  Too many of us come into the dressing room and fuss and pick over the tiniest details without actually looking at the bigger picture in the mirror.  Expecting to be a beacon of light without a shadow of a doubt is expecting Perfection.   It’s impossible.  So why strive for Perfect, when Magnificent will do?

Be well and do good work!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Seamstress Math

Hello my lovelies!

A seamstress I know hangs up the phone and sighs with exasperation.  A newly engaged bride named Melody has called to find out how much it will cost to alter a wedding gown.  She does not know what kinds of alterations it needs, how many layers it has to hem, or if it needs a bustle. A bustle is a technical term for something in a hedge row… Just kidding. It’s when you button up the train of a gown so it hangs even with the rest of the dress. A train is something that people take to get somewhere else. It’s also the long part of the gown that all the drunk people at the wedding are going to step on after a bride drags it down the aisle. This bride on the phone does not have her shoes yet and she has no idea when she can bring the dress in for a fitting.  But she wants a price.   How much?  My friend wiggles her fingers in a mystical way at the phone, now back in its cradle, as if she is clairvoyant.  Hmmm… she muses… somewhere between $80-120? $400? $50? Who the hell knows…

          “Don’t people GET it? Has NO ONE ever gone to a math class??” she asks for the thousandth time this month, “We need all the variables before we can do the problem!” 

As a person who calls a ruler a “stick with numbers,” I confess that Math has never been my strong suite.  In fact, if I had ever suspected how much math I would wind up having to use on a daily basis, I would have tried to pay more attention to things like compound fractions and inverted denominations while the teachers were droning on about them.  I just snuck storybooks of myths and legends under my desk and assumed that in my future life I would never need to find a coefficient—which I assume is something efficient—though I probably need one now!  Alas, math is everywhere. It sneaks up on you.  I said this once to my friend Steve, who is a math teacher in western Massachusetts, and he said “Please come into my class and tell my students that!!  Please!  They have no idea!”

I remember back to fifth grade, when we were asked to calculate how far Mr. Smith would drive if he was traveling East on a Tuesday at 55 miles per hour and drove for two and a half hours, I was always less interested in the pertinent information—( 55 x 2.5) and much more intrigued by the impertinent.  Why was he traveling East? Why Tuesday? Did Mrs. Smith pack him a lunch—like grandma’s basket of pepper and egg sandwiches—so that he would not have to stop at some revolting fast-food place? Did he really have some place important to go to or was he just doing this to drive us fifth graders mad?  I never got the hang of word problems and I’m not even all that good at the most basic calculations.  In college, when I was working at a fabric store called Piece Goods, I actually concluded that a customer would need about 76 yards of fabric to make a set of kitchen curtains.  She believed me without question, even though the average window is not more than one yard wide and two yards long.   We started wondering how many bolts, at ten yards a bolt, we would have to order.  Luckily, a co-worker named Georgia with a rich, mahogany laugh, interrupted us with the shout, “Girl!  That’s exactly the right amount of fabric…if-ing you planning to slipcover Rhode Island with the leftovers!”

“How much?” is the question we are asked over and over again.  Often the answers are arbitrary, based on a strange alchemy between how much effort something requires and how much we think the customer is willing to value that effort in actual dollars.  The use of money as a translation for talent, time, and energy is imperfect.  When I hear from mathematician friends that numbers get very flexible the more sophisticated the equations get, I feel confused.  Numbers are numbers. Facts are facts.  Well, apparently not at the highest levels—which includes Advanced Number Theory, the United States Government, and certain tailoring shops, where something called "a skinch" (a skinny inch) is an accepted measurement.

We use basic math, particularly geometry, for an average of nine hours a day.  The life of a seamstress consists mostly of word problems such as:

1.     “Ruthie Chooch sees a blouse on sale at T.J. Maxx for $12 and decides to buy it, regardless of the fact that it is a size 2 and she is a most curvatious and voluptuous  size 18. She loves the design so much—she decides to buy two blouses in the hopes that a local seamstress can sew them together somehow.   How many blouses, at 12 dollars a pop, will it take to slipcover Ms. Chooch’s bazoombas?  Keep in mind, she is planning to wear this garment to church.   And how much will this project cost in the end, after the frazzled seamstress spends four days on it?

a.      The GDP of a tiny country

b.     Think of a number, any number

c.      Nothing, as Ms. Chooch will never come pick it up.

2.     Given that this shop pays ( x in rent + y in utilities +z in employee salaries), how much should we charge to hem a pair of pants?

a.      $500

b.     $10

c.      We should do them for free, like granny did.

3.     Mrs. Joysmacker swoops into the shop and slaps twenty beautiful shawls down on the table.  They are hand-crocheted cotton triangles in vibrant organic dyes from some third-world country where people still know how to make such loveliness.  Mrs. Joysmacker wants them hacked into pieces and reassembled as a kind of sweater/coat for herself that is fringed all over.   How many triangles will be destroyed to make a large rectangle to cover her back, two thinner rectangles to cover her front, and two cylinders for arms? 

a.      19.5

b.     47

c.      We could not bear to count

4.     Mrs. Muffincrusher has purchased some curtains on sale.  In her eagerness to save herself a buck, she neglects to realize that these panels were 84” long.  She now needs them shortened to 64.”  The clever seamstress now

a.      Chops twenty inches off the bottom of each panel and calls it a day

b.     Chops anything from 19-22 inches off each panel, none of which turn out to be 84” to begin with

c.      Sweats the details VERY carefully, knowing that the dim eyesight that overlooked the numeral 84 on the package will not fail to notice a hairs’ breath of  difference from ten yards away and that Mrs. Muffincrusher will be back to plague her at least sixteen times until she gets it right.

5.     Bertha Birkenstock’s son Bobby is a very busy boy scout.  He has earned quite a few patches recently and needs twelve new ones stitched onto his sash.  If we normally charge between 2-4 dollars a patch (depending on size and whether or not there are pockets involved), how much will Bobby’s achievements in knot-tying and whittling cost Bertha Birkenstock?

a.      $24-48 because each patch will be a different color and we will have to change threads at least 47 times and break three needles in the process

b.     $12 because Bertha  Birkenstock will moan and groan otherwise

c.      Why the hell don’t boy scouts get a patch for learning how to sew on their own damn patches?

These are just a few of the problems that we run into on a daily basis.  Let’s not even get into the kind of geometry it takes to fit a man with no bum who wants to wear his pants tight! As a carpenter in cloth, I’ve come a long way in my math skills.  “A long way,” I said, not “far.”  The two are very different things, as I hope you have learned by now.  Most days, I remember to make sure the tape is starting with the numeral “1” when I take someone’s measurements. And I always measure more than once.  I hate it when I cut something three times and then it’s still too short!

Be well, be kind, and do good work!

Nancy

The Gift of Being a Misfit

Hello my lovelies!

A handsome, blue-eyed, off-the-rack sort of guy, meeting me for the first time said “what is it you do, exactly? What is altering clothing?”  (the altered universe) He was a writer, so I said “I edit clothing. I take out what isn’t needed here and add more there.” He nodded in a bemused way. “Is there enough work in that? How many people have clothes that don’t fit?”  I peered at him incredulously.  At 6’1” with a slim, athletic build, he might have never once in his life have had the experience of things not fitting.  Not for him the anxious bargaining, writhing and twisting while lying down to get a pair of jeans over his hips.  Hmmm...  It might never have occurred to him that modern mass-produced clothing does not actually fit the masses.  I literally, had never met anyone like him before.   “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said, which is something I notice people saying just before they are about to say something rude, “but what is it you do all day?”  The answer is something I have been considering ever since.  

This blog is an attempt to figure out exactly what it is I do all day, while other people are saving the rainforest, researching climate change, curing cancer, feeding the hungry…. Me? I’m just trying to make your damn pants fit so they don’t ride up your ass and make you grumpy. It’s not really as noble as rescuing puppies from a burning building but there you go.  There’s still a need for it.  I never set out to fix the world one pair of pants at a time or be, like Saint Therese, a “saint in little ways.”  No, I had grander plans for myself, though I have since forgotten what they were. I think I wanted to be a veterinarian or maybe  a professional roller-skater. At fifty, I have been through a thing or two and I have reached what Plato called the “Philosopher’s Age.”  I see now that someone whose pants are not bunching up and chafing his or her butt cheeks might actually be a kinder, more enlightened human being--one who might support Heifer International or donate to public radio during one of their pledge drives.   And perhaps it is up to that kinder, more pleasant, less chafed individual to save the world, not me.  Such is my gift to humanity. 

Like Eve, I went into clothing design for moral reasons.  At nine years of age, I inherited a box of Barbie dolls from a neighbor. I didn’t need to eat any apples to observe they were naked.  Seriously dismayed to learn that Mattel did not sell pious garments for these hard-boiled hussies, I began to fashion little nun habits for them out of toilet paper.  In no time at all, they were the Sisters of the Immaculate Septic System, complete with rosaries made out of dental floss and my sisters and I could play “the Sound of Music to our heart’s content.   In fifth grade, I learned I could escape my mother’s horrible healthy lunches (peanut butter and bean sprout sandwiches on homemade wheat bread strong enough to shingle houses) by trading homemade doll clothes for junk food.  I once commanded the exorbitant fee of a whole bag of cheetos for a carefully tailored blue doll coat that took me three days to make. In High School, I took to sewing in self-defense when I realized my bum was not respecting the narrow imaginations of 1980’s clothing designers.  I had to figure out how to tailor my clothes so it would not look like I was shoplifting seat cushions.  When others found out I could do this, word spread to the anguished and my ministry began.

Here I am today, more than 30 years later: Still clothing the naked, disguising the buttocks, and sewing for food--though now I really LIKE bean sprouts! For an average of forty to sixty hours a week, people present me with their problems and I attempt to fix them.  Doctors hear stories of pain; Lawyers hear stories of personal injury; I get to hear about how gremlins snuck into your closet at night and shrank all your clothes.   Time and time again, I am told that being a seamstress is “old-fashioned” that I am part of a dying breed.  That may be so but it’s not because our clothes are fitting any better.  And since most of us still wear clothes, there is an overwhelming need for people to take up this craft.  Thanks to my work, I get to see close up how most of us are not a perfect fit.  Having felt like a misfit in one way or another for most of my life, this is tremendously healing.  I am not alone. You, dear reader, aren’t either.  None of us are.  We are each slightly different, as unique as snowflakes--flakes with one leg longer, one shoulder higher, a bum with enough mass to have its own planetary magnetism,  or no bum at all, we are all in danger of being Magnificent when our clothes and lives begin to fit us better. 

It’s a gift to be a misfit.  I see it time and time again in the fitting room.  Being a misfit helps create mindfulness.  A person’s “flaw” becomes her beauty when put in the right setting.  Attention must be paid, accommodations made, reality faced.  These are good things for us humans to do.  They are the gateways to humility, compassion, and gratitude.  And Laughter, which makes everything fit better! It sometimes takes a bit of work to make things fit. That’s ok.  We deserve it.  

Be well, and do good work.

Yours aye,

Nancy

Prayer of a Seamstress

Dear Lord,

We dedicate this work to you. 

We ask you to bless our hands and use them as your own, even as they ache from heavy scissors and sting from needles and pins.

May our presence at work today be a blessing on others and ourselves, though disagreeable customers may fret or nag, and leave our tiny dressing room with choking clouds of perfume, coffee breath, or last night’s bean burrito.

Teach us to forgive those who give us half a day to redesign an entire wedding dress that they knew four months ago did not fit.

Grant us your patience, Lord, when people grumble at how much we charge and blithely inform us that their dead grandmother used to do it for nothing.

We surrender to you our striving to make both sleeves come out even, asking only that the bobbin not run out two inches from the end of the seam.

Save us, we pray, from the drudgery of dungarees that need to be hemmed a quarter of an inch and deliver us from the evils of hemming the same damn leg twice and neglecting to do the other one.

Protect us from the Dance Mothers, Mothers of the Brides, or any other imposing female who needs to give us the full, entire, exhaustive, repetitive history of the provenance of her daughter’s gown. 

May we measure as many times as it takes but cut only once.  May we trust our eyes, not our ears, when someone insists he still has the 29 inch waist he had twenty years ago.  May we hem and taper, taper and hem, until every young, male, bald ankle reveals its glory to the world yet may we encourage anyone over fifty to stick to cuffs.

Thank you for your faith in us that such a glorious mission—that men no more may roam your creation with broken zippers and missing buttons, nor any woman  wear jeans that refuse to accommodate her entire ass—has been placed in our hands.  We are humbly grateful for our many blessings.               Amen