the growing edge: sewing

It all started last weekend. I brushed past a beautiful dress in the closet, sent to me long ago by a friend with a gift for thrifting who, in her characteristic generous way, found it, knew I would appreciate it, and mailed it off. Sadly it was made for a woman far less pear-shaped than I, but it was too lovely to part with, so there it hung quietly, day after day in my closet. When I noticed it there last week, I realized it's rectangular shape just might provide enough fabric for two square pillows. If it did, the dress could become a bright and beautiful part of our everyday domestic landscape.

And look, there they are! I felt very, very accomplished. Sewing is right on my growing edge. That's a phrase I picked up in grad school, sitting in on a group therapy session. The psychologist who used it with a group of young women struggling with eating disorders had borrowed it from a yoga teacher. We have the comfort zone (Mike and I watching The Office snuggled in bed), the growing edge (me, sitting before the sewing machine, puzzling over the detached presser foot and reminding myself to take deep breaths), and the pain zone (use your imagination). Conceptually, making a couple of pillow cases does not seem so difficult. The problem is I do not do spatial relationships. The whole right side/wrong side of the fabric, flipping things inside out, etc? Oy. Feel free to laugh at me, because it is downright comical how much concerted effort and focus is takes for me to figure these little challenges of the physical universe out. I have to talk to myself. A lot.

But you guys - I did it! It is not often in adult life that we experience that feeling of really learning something new, something that is not particularly easy for us. I tend to avoid the things I'm not very good at. Being able to steer clear of (some) hard things is one of those unappreciated luxuries of adulthood. Not so for children, who have to confront a dizzying range of unknown skills and information - from monkey bars to multiplication - every day.

So I endured the discomfort of the growing edge, and it proved so thrilling to make something beautiful and useful that I kept going. Yesterday I finished these curtains for Mike's office.

I sewed two panels onto old white curtains, cut up to fit the new fabric I had. Again, between muttering to myself and the noise of rusty, squeaky machinery in my brain heavily slogging away as I probed the inner mysteries of my sewing machine, I made some pathetic music. But now Mike has pretty curtains!

Yesterday I read a Wendell Berry essay that spoke so eloquently of what we lose when everything we depend upon in our lives is mediated by outside corporations and organizations - when we are unable to create and provide for ourselves the things we need and enjoy.  Here is the prophetic Berry (writing in 1979) on the evils of our complacency:

Our people have given up their independence in return for the cheap seductions and the shoddy merchandise of so-called "affluence." We have delegated all our vital functions and responsibilities to salesmen and agents and bureaus and experts of all sorts. We cannot feed or clothe ourselves, or entertain ourselves, or communicate with each other, or be charitable or neighborly or loving, or even respect ourselves, without recourse to a merchant or a corporation or a public-service organization or an agency of the government or a style-setter or an expert.

He goes on to articulate how it is that when we are ignorant of, for example, how food is grown, we become more and more disconnected from the earth (and the people around us) that sustains us. Eventually we do not understand our connection to the earth, and as Berry says, we tend to destroy the things we do not understand. This resonated deeply with me, especially considering the tenuous, slight understanding I have of all the 'conveniences' around me: the mind-boggling mystery of wireless internet, the origin of my clothing, the route some baby arugula took to make it to my plate this evening, the telephone, the plumbing, the way my kids' shoes are made.

Here is one final quote to leave you with. I've been thinking about what it means to think little ever since reading this passage. Are there times to think big? Does thinking big compromise our abilities to think little? Does our yearning for public (and thereby less intimate) acknowledgement of our good deeds betray some immaturity or weakness?

But the citizen who is willing to Think Little, and, accepting the discipline of that, to go ahead on his own, is already solving the problem. A man who is trying to live as a neighbor to his neighbors will have a lively and practical understanding of the work of peace and brotherhood, and let there be no mistake about it - he is doing that work. A couple who make a good marriage, and raise healthy, morally competent children, are serving the world's future more directly and surely than any political leader, though they never utter a public word.

Well. One more sewing project on the horizon: curtains for the playroom. I know buying fabric at the Ikea in College Park and then figuring out how to sew four relatively straight seams around it is not exactly an example of the heroic and dignified self-reliance that Mr. Berry would rally around. But I'm thinking little these days. Making curtains (and decent neighborhoods, and thoughtful kids) really is work - in the best, most satisfying sense of the word.