Endless threads

Life moves differently when you’re in survival mode. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, when our feelings of safety and stability aren't met, it is against our better sense to pursue our hobbies and passions. Instead we focus on securing what is innately most important, stability in our own microcosm.

My father was the baby of seven, he raised me on his own for nearly 14 years. The hardwired grit and ingenuity of my German grandparents trickled down to my own bloodline through him. I saw the potential and useability in almost everything and it made me incredibly resourceful growing up in poverty. As an adult I still see what life and purpose things have left when others may see them as an exhausted commodity. I take much pride in my ability to make much more with very little, from cooking to sewing to problem solving.

3 years ago I ended a 6 year relationship with a covert narcissist who was verbally and physically abusive, sharp, unkind, dismissive, neglectful and bitte. Yet still now I just see a broken and angry boy who even through my grit and drive I could not lead to seeing his potential. Six years of chaos and noise and instability. The loud staccato of gunfire echoing from video games all hours of the day, in his computer room that should have been our daughter's nursery. The fights that escalated every time to yelling, the sarcastic and biting blows to my ego, the slamming of doors, the crying of children I comforted alone, the endless nights laying in bed listening to music blaring from his computer room. I couldn’t move up the pyramid, up the hierarchy to my better and happier self.

Until I did.

When I finally removed the chaos from my life and home, I felt a slow and emotional return to myself. The house was so quiet and calm, almost eerie. The stillness of the night, the golden light of the morning, the reverence in a sleepy breakfast with my daughters. We all felt it and held it close, a new treasure, trying to explore and understand the calm that came with it. No more gun staccato, no more slamming doors. Just peace and light settling into every corner and closet and heart.

A month after the chaos ended I began unpacking myself into the empty room. Bins and bins of treasure packed away for too long. My sewing machines came out ready, the 1920’s writing table from an old motel, and the colonial captain’s chair formed my altar and throne. There were boxes pulled from years of storage with all of my fabric, bought and salvaged with loving care since my first sewing machine at age 15. I organized yards and yards of precious ecru antique lace, heirloom notions, spools and spools of beautiful hues of endless thread. My adorable cactus pincushion sat waiting to fulfill it’s duty, full of my grandmother’s needles and pins gleaming and ready.

In that quiet I began to fall in love with and thrive on the soft sounds of my passions coming back to life.

The sharp, almost crunchy hiss of a pair of shears cutting through fabric. The punctuated and tiny sound of snips cutting through a thread. The soft ripple of the water as I stirred antique whites in my clawfoot bathtub, romanticizing the pintucks and petticoats. The droning hum of the sewing machine as you lose yourself in the punching needle. The almost silent fwip of drawing a thread through fabric, the tap and tempo of a thread ripper undoing our mistakes.

These quiet moments grounded me, connected me to that German ingenuity where antique textiles met the hiss of the shears and were given new life. In that calm I connected with these 100 year old garments, saw the love and commitment, felt the appreciation for the dedication it took to do white work or bobbin lace or a wedding dress or the delicate and loving mending. These crafters reminded me to slow down, to bask in the quiet, to fall in love with the hushed sounds of sewing and self care.