Home | Current Issue | Submissions | Masthead | About Us | Archive

Sewing
Kimberly James Creden

         The fabric was perfect.  No wrinkles and the fold was crisp.  I laid it out across the counter smoothing the wrinkles that weren’t there.  The pattern pieces fit perfectly--covering the fabric almost completely.  Small scraps would be left over, but at least I guessed right this time.  Just scraps, not much waste.  Everything working out just right.
         Bob came in and settled into the sofa.  Another NASCAR weekend as expected. 
         “How’s it going?”  he casually asked.
          “Good,”  I told him.  He wasn’t really interested and I knew it.  It was just conversation. 
         Carefully, I cut around the pieces.  My scissors had just come back from being sharpened, and they were serving me well.  Whenever I cut out a pattern, it always got a little tricky around the small bits.  Not this time.  They were sharp, and the fabric wasn’t fighting it.  A good sign for a project start.  Hopefully the rest would go as well.
         “So what did you think about having my parents here for Thanksgiving?”  Bob asked me.  My heart skipped a beat.  I had hoped that with the kitchen renovations going on we had dodged this bullet.   Carefully, I ran the thread through the path for threading the sewing machine and put everything at the ready.  I lifted the presser foot putting the fabric in place.  Everything was ready.  My foot was on the pedal that made the machine do its thing.  I just needed to do mine.
         “Well……..I’m not really sure," I replied slowly.  "Do you honestly think we should?”
         “Why not?  We haven’t had them here in a while, and the kids would love it.  I’m sure my mom would love to see the new landscaping.  And you know, you’re so good at the whole dinner thing.  It’ll be fine.  You’ll see.” 
         Well, that all may have been true, but it seemed like he was forgetting that every time his parents were around there was so much stress I could use my sewing shears to cut it.  For whatever reason, he always seemed to forget it once they were gone. 
         I liked Bob's parents; who wouldn't?  They were perfect.  That was the point--they were too perfect.  Bob's dad had been a bank president in a small mid-western town when Bob was growing up.  Image was everything, and everything had to be perfect.  Bob Sr. and Madeline were the perfect couple with the perfect kids.  They belonged to the country club and had cocktail parties, and their pictures frequently graced the society pages of their town's local newspaper.
         The problem with perfect, though, was that it's an impossible standard to live up to.  Throughout my marriage to Bob, I had always felt that through every holiday and every family event, I was constantly being measured by a standard I could never live up to.  There was always pressure to do things in Bob's family's tradition, and I never felt that I could measure up.   And Bob made it very clear where I didn't.
         The other problem with perfect is that problems do not exist.  Bob's mother, Madeline, had told me once that there was a time where she would try and talk to Bob Sr. about issues or concerns she had about their marriage and it was always met with a promise that they would talk "later."  Later, however, never came.  Nothing got talked about; nothing resolved.  Instead, it was always swept under the rug. 
         Bob, it would seem, had learned the same method for problem handling.   Whenever I wanted to talk to him about something that was bothering me about our marriage, he always seemed to disappear.  Or he would tell me that we would talk about it later, which we never did.        Or, if I did manage to speak up, I would get so much hostility in return I would regret ever having opened my mouth.  Bob was always able to criticize and humiliate me to the point where I felt I could do nothing right. 
         A Thanksgiving with Bob's family was sure to mean a high amount of stress as I tried to make sure that everything was perfect.  There would always be the behind-the-scenes stress and fighting between Bob and me, but it all had to be hidden from his parents.  In front of them Bob pretended that everything was great.  When they were out of earshot, though, it was a different story.  The whole aspect of pretending perfect was absolutely crazy-making to me.
         I was surprised at how well the stitches were going.  Nice and even.  Not one mistake -- yet.  Hopefully I wasn’t going to have to spend time with the ripper -- that little tool that helped me cut through the mess I had been known to make once the stitches got tangled.  Optimistically I hadn’t even found it before I started this time -- one of those things I pretty much always did. 
         But what about this Thanksgiving thing?  What kind of mess was I going to have to deal with there?  Bob had been asking me for about a week about it, and I had tried to avoid the conversation every time.  Now that he was in the room with me and I was sewing, I was a bit trapped.  It wasn’t as if I could just randomly decide to go do something else -- not after I had made such a big production about wanting to sew.  But I really didn’t want to have this conversation either.  He never understood my point of view on the whole having-his-parents-to-visit thing.  He never saw the stress that the kids and I always felt.    He never saw the mess of it all.
         I didn’t want to fight with him--I never did.  And no matter what, there would be a fight about Thanksgiving.  Whether it was between he and I or when his parents got here.  It was going to happen.  I just couldn’t ever figure out how to keep it from happening.
         "My mom already said they would bring the turkey and a dessert, so I’ll go ahead and have her call you to plan out the rest.”  Bob’s words landed on me like a bomb.  If I had a choice it was gone now.  Did I ever even have one in the first place?  Why didn’t I ever say anything?  Why couldn’t I tell him what I felt?
         In actuality, I knew the answer to that question.  My own upbringing was quite different than Bob's.  My parents weren't perfect--far from it.  Alcoholism ran rampant in my house as my mother and step-father had a social circle that spent quite a bit of time together getting drunk.  My mother was the type to get a bit ugly when she drank, and frequently I would be the target of a barrage of criticisms of how having me ruined her life.  I quickly developed a fear of abandonment by my mother and learned that being invisible was my best protection.  If I didn't make waves, didn't speak up, didn't draw attention to myself, I'd be safe.  Or so I grew to think. 
         My tumultuous relationship with Bob triggered those same childhood fears that were so ingrained in my subconscious.  If I spoke up or disagreed with Bob, it always ended badly.  Hostility was his tool to get his way, and it almost always worked.  I always gave in to keep the peace--the cost being my sense of self-worth dwindling over time.
         I reached the end of sewing my first piece.  No tangles, so I haven’t made a mess--not yet, but now almost everything I’ve done has to be done again. The bottom stitch--key to keeping the whole thing together -- was missing from almost all of what I just sewn.  There was no connection to the top.  No way to keep it all together. 
         I take it all apart and get ready to wind another bobbin.  Hopefully, this time, I really will have everything in place.  No matter what I do on the front end of a project, there is always something I forget.