Happiness as a good deed

"There comes a time when you roll up your sleeves and put yourself at the top of the commitment list." These words, stated by the children's rights activist Marian Wright Edelman, apply tangentially to the mask-making efforts I volunteered for back in March of 2020 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic amid a Personal Protection shortage in the healthcare industry.

Not since 1982 had I sat at a sewing machine for any length of time, yes, I have sewn the random button or hem, or sheet or blanket or hand-stitched any number of repairs to doll clothes and shirts or even lately used the dusty old singer to turn construction drop cloth material from the big box store into fashionable draperies for my home. Still, those were not fun projects, well maybe the draperies, yes those drapes were a fun project for me, a tiny oasis of time, and in the end, I had produced a tangible, useful, stylish item to show for it.

I answered the call, well text, or maybe it was a DM or PM, or a FaceTime, whatever it was, I gave my word that I could be counted on to join in the mask-making efforts of not one but two local groups helping to relieve the PPE burden on the medical community. Within a day, I was recruited to make twenty masks, Olson masks, for which I was sent a pattern and asked if I had the correct type of fabric. I did and all the sundry items I needed. What I didn't have was expertise. In any case, I went straight to work studying and working the pattern at such a level of concentration that when my eyes wandered and caught the dresser mirror to my right, my side-eye spied my tongue peeking out my pierced lips. Something my grandmother always did as she sewed. This gave me pause and a snicker. I stuck my tongue back through my pierced lips and got back to work thinking grandma would be proud. It had been 50 years since I've felt that close to anything grandma had so lovingly sewn for me. She made everything imaginable as a master seamstress. She made all of my clothing for my first 5 years. Long forgotten memories of her began creeping back into my head. I would cut pieces for her or help her pick out a pattern. My favorites were the ones she made for her little dog Tessy. She labored over those with great care, and watching her work with that concentration tongue was a wonderment to me. She would see me looking and snicker and then pull it back in only to have it pop back out a few seconds later.

As I labored over these 20 masks laying out and cutting the fabric and learning how to thread the bobbin, and finding ways to create an assembly line to get these done faster as they were much-needed items. I thought about grandma's presence around me; I realized that rolling up my sleeves for this work would bring me back to another time I had felt closest to grandma since she departed us way back in 1970. This long-forgotten time was way back in high school home economics class when we were tasked with making our own outfits. I chose a popular Simplicity pattern of the "1-hour pattern" collection to make a short-sleeved shirt and skirt. This time also shocked me as to how close I felt to grandma during these projects I completed at school. Being from a small town where everyone knows everyone and everything about you, the teacher had talked about being with my grandma at the laundromat and having to have my grandma do an impromptu fix to her skirt that had ripped. It was a poodle skirt, and the waistband nearly fell off of the dress. Grandma jumped to service, grabbing her notions and thread, got on her knees, fixed her up as she sat there in the chair watching that tongue stick out through those pierced lips. How nostalgic it felt to hear my teacher tell the story while I worked.

As I sign up to make bounding hearts for the neonatal intensive care units in the area, I also sign up for another memory of grandma to come flooding back in. I don't know when or how, but I'll be prepared that I might shed a happy tear or pierce my lips and stick out my tongue. But, I know I will never stop sewing. I see this passion runs generations deep, and I know that I am putting myself first as I serve others.