Greetings Dear Ones!

I may not look it to the casual observer, but I am a deeply empathic person. When you watch those Psych 2 Go videos on Youtube and they talk about people who have a paranormal ability to apprehend the emotional state of another individual, that’s me—particularly if the “individual” is an animal, a tool, or an article of clothing. I am a native speaker of goat, sheep, spinning wheel, chipmunk, and dog—including a highly localized dialect of surly Jack Russell whose vocabulary consists mainly of things that could never be said on prime time T.V. (No wonder he still doesn’t have his own Taco Bell commercial.) Pretty much anyone can tell what kittens are thinking—but I know why the tractor trembles... I can hear pants weep…

So when a man brings in his favorite shirt and asks me to mend it, I take one look at it and can tell it is not just exhausted, it is severely clinically depressed. Another victim of Covid.

“I loaned it to my girlfriend—well, actually she just kinda borrowed it because she liked the way it smelled—and I think she ate some kind of food in it and slopped it all down the front and then tried to scrub the stains out and these holes appeared,” he says pointing to the damage. While Prudence rolls her eyes and tut-tuts behind the scenes, I peer at the holes in the shirt with interest. I have seen such holes before. A woman used to bring tank tops to us at the old shop with holes that were very similar. She always giggled and told us mice had eaten her clothes. “Those silly mice,” she would say chirpily, slapping the table and laughing as if she lived in a Disney movie where they were supposed to be sewing her ball gowns instead of gnawing through her grundy under layers. She thought it was simply adorable to be the butt of one of their little jokes in the way that nervous nerds often find themselves sucking up to rats in middle school.

The holes in the threadbare fabric of this shirt are neatly snipped, as if by tiny scissors. No sponge, no matter how vigorous, did this damage. “What happened to you, poor baby?” I croon mentally to the shirt. I surpress the urge to cuddle it and hold it up to my ear to hear the answer as Prudence wrinkles her nose disapprovingly. Even through my mask I can smell the thing. The girlfriend might like the way this shirt smells but we sure don’t! This shirt needs a hot sudsy bath and a week in the sun. (Hell, who doesn’t?)

I study the shirt carefully. It’s a nice shirt, all in all, though ancient and threadbare in spots. It was made from Indian cotton, softened with age to the texture of micro flannel, in a striped pattern that hasn’t been popular for many decades, if ever. The original reds and blues have faded to macho pinks and purples. Thread in the seams looks overweight, too robust for the fineness of the fabric. This shirt was originally something hippie and organic looking, with the sturdiness of denim but in its old age it has the texture of gauze. You can read newsprint through parts of it.

“Can it be fixed?” he wants to know.

I hesitate, then answer slowly, “Well, I can mend it. That’s a little different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I explain. “I’m pretty sure that by “fix” you mean ‘return to its original condition.’ That I most definitely cannot do. I can’t close these up with seams or darts. They are in weird places. It would not look right. And I cannot darn them with invisible weaving because the fabric is just far too fragile. However, I could make a neat little job of patching them. But patches are patches and are not going to be subtle.”

“You can’t just sew it?” he asks. But what he really wants to know is if I have a magic wand that can miraculously make all this go away so it will look like it used to look.

“No.” I say, “I cannot just sew it. I can create patches but we are going to have a really hard time matching this fabric—new fabric won’t look right—and the shirt is going to have a kind of thick spot where the patches go that will seem stiff or lumpish. In fact, it might look terrible. The good news is that patching clothes is super trendy—nothing looks more Woke than fixing clothes instead of throwing them away. I’ll do it by hand with stitches that look like the mice did them after they snacked on it first. ”

He bites his lip, considering. I can see how emotionally attached he is to this shirt and how increasingly vexed he is with his woman. He does not want patches. Meanwhile, I discover, much to my delight, that the shirt has pockets and they are lined with the same fabric.

“Hey!” I cry, “We can use the pockets for the patch fabric. I can harvest a little from one pocket—you don’t need both of them, do you? I can replace it with a different fabric and you’ll never know.

The man shrugs. The Shirt sags and looks even more defeated. They don’t want this change to happen, even if it is a change for the better. They want everything to go back to the way it was before Grundalina’s cousin got around to straining her vittles through it and leaving it for mice to eat.

“We can’t turn back time. We need to make a plan,” I say briskly, effectively announcing that his mourning period must come to an end. “Maybe you want me to make something else out of it—a pillow, perhaps, to salvage the fabric and the memories? You can take it away and think it over if you like.” My shop is small and we are reaching the ten minute mark. I don’t like my appointments to drag on too long during a pandemic. He looks so appalled at the notion of turning the shirt into a pillow that I try not to giggle.

He decides to have the patches done and leaves.

Now I have this ragged old shirt to fix. It’s like a velveteen Rabbit it’s been loved so much. Loved and… quite frankly, abused. Nothing I do will make it look like it used to. But NOT fixing it is not an option either. It reminds me partly of every broken heart I’ve ever had and partly of my country. What do they have in common? Serious mending must be done. And it might not look pretty for a while. Our stitches will be visible, so we need to make them say what needs to be said about our art. We can turn the patches into decorations, even badges that say: “We’ve been through something and we’re better now. We were too valuable to throw away. Someone cared enough to stabilize the trauma so that no more damage could occur.”

I feel for this shirt. I feel for that man. Hopefully, by the time he comes back to pick up the shirt, he will have come to terms with his delusions about how long things can last. Time and Pizza sauce take heavy tolls. Every shirt is just as mortal as its wearer.

What I love best is when someone comes along and takes a stack of ragged shirts like this and turns them into a soft blanket of caring for a new generation. It takes guts to release what Was and create a new vision for the future and what is possible. I look down at my own shirt and realize Grundalina has been at it again. There is a trail of salad dressing that indicates my messy habit of taking giant bites of things while not paying attention. The stains are not going to come out of this shirt either. I suppose I could leave it for mice to eat, or I could imagine something Better. So it is with the fabric of our shirts, our flags, our souls.

Remember to hug a veteran today! I thank each of them, and each of you, for your Service and good work, from the bottom of my patched up heart. Let the mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy