Just a Singin’

When the dishes are done and the house is quiet, I sometimes eagerly gather my supplies. Neatly folded stacks of cloth, shiny scissors and extra thread and needles, accumulate on my kitchen table, before I sit down in front of my Singer sewing machine. My Singer itself, is not particularly anything special. I have gone through many of them over the years. But, there is always a Singer in my life.

It’s a bit funny to me, that they are named ‘Singer’ sewing machines. First of all, they all hum the same busy tune as they have hammered away at so many things… quilts and clothes, pageant dresses and dog coats, curtains and tablecloths and Christmas gifts. All of the things I have sewn over the years, all sounded the same.

But, really, the Singers that I have sat stooped over time and again, sing many more songs than the noise of their busy little motors laying their neat stitches, on and on and on. If you listen closely, you can hear centuries of my ancestors, too. And these are the songs of the Singers that I can hear, even when my deaf ears can hear nothing else at all.

There is my Mama, pregnant with me, but still working like a man in a spinning plant, with dozens of industrial machines roaring in her ears. There she is again, making Halloween costumes and shepherd’s garments for Christmas programs at church… and her song sounds like some sort of amazing grace.

There are my parent’s mothers, sewing rugs in carpet mills and bras in factories, and clothes for my dolls.. and their Singers sing the songs of their grandmother’s love for their first born children, and their first born grandchild. Their songs are utilitarian songs about working til they died, to pay their bills, and thrive and survive.

Then there are the treddle foot Singers of the next generation past, sewing cotton sacks and clothes for their children, struggling through the Depression to make ends meet. Their sewing song sounds like the marching feet of their brothers, sons and husbands, marching off to war.. and their home fires burned, and they earned the right to vote, and the Singers sung their Victory songs, and their time wore on.

My Singer even sings the songs that were written, long before Singers were ever a household name. A time now politcially incorrect, or not remembered correctly by anyone anywhere at all. A desperate, hardcore time it was, when the womenfolk tended their homes and homesteads and children and families, while their menfolk fought for an antibellum utopia that may or may not have even existed in the first place. A song of rebellion, a song of the past.. a song of needles pushed back and forth through muslin and brocade and the skin of the wounded men, sent home in defeat, after it was all said and done. And while they handled their gardens and farms and children and homes, my battle scarred ancestors sewed their necessities at night, straining to see the stitches before a coal oil lantern or flickering stove. Yes somehow, they managed to produce quilts for their families and uniforms for the Confederacy. Their hand sewn song sounds like Dixie, echoing across the years and Deltas and the hot, tempestuous Southern nights.

Even in the tapestry woven by my lifeblood, you can hear the Native American women sewing hides into blankets, and moccasins and homes with pieces of bone.. and you can hear their war drums pound in the distance, with a battlecry screaming above it all.

I can only hope that when I am gone, the things I have sewn on dozens of shiny white Singers, with their little chrome feet and bright shiny bulbs, will echo a song that my children’s children can hear, and know just as I do, that its part of who they are.