A Sewing Kit and Other Threads . . .

 

This is my sewing kit. Yes, it is, laugh if you must. Inside an old ice-cream container sits: one pin cushion, a soft tape measure, a few spools of thread, some random buttons, a packet of needles (unopened), and those iron-on hemming strips. I believe the pin cushion belonged to my mother. I’m not sure how it made its way to me. I don’t sew.

A full five years or more after I moved here, while searching for a flexible measuring tape, I realized this sewing kit was still sitting in a cardboard box in my storage locker. It dawned on me . . . yeah, once upon a time I think I had a sewing kit.

As you’ve deduced, my sewing skills are non-existent. My mother once had a sewing machine (the kind you cranked by hand) and attempted to teach me and my sister to use it, but I quickly abandoned the idea. Same for embroidery and knitting. I had one piece of embroidery that I dragged along with me for a few grades when we had ‘sewing class’ in school (restricted to the girls while the boys played sports in the yard). When no more than one corner of the embroidery piece was complete after about three years, I tossed it, unfinished (possibly into a garbage can).

I do not have any of the skills my mother had and I realize now I had a disdain for anything considered domestic. I didn’t want to acquire such skills because, in the arrogance of youth, I thought I would have no need for them. Domesticity was for others. I was destined for more.

Which brings me to the question: If we don’t aspire to have the skills or talent of others, do we then place lesser value on those people?

I admire and delight in others’ cooking expertise, eager to partake of the results. But I don’t aspire to be accomplished in the kitchen. I’m okay with being mediocre, haphazard, never following a recipe exactly, occasionally having a brilliant success, mostly just getting by.

But show me a writer whose pages I can get lost in, a painter whose work bedazzles me, an athlete (preferably a tennis player) whose feats astound me – and I’m agog with admiration, and yes, I aspire to do what they do.

Does this inevitably lead to passing judgment and evaluation on people? Do I consider a seamstress less admirable or valuable than a poet? Yet, there are people who evoke admiration even though I have no desire to do what they do:  Firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers.

As much as we’d like not to, we invariably carry within us our biases. Are there varying degrees in which we place value on these skills, and is it ONLY about competence and talent? Or is it more than that?

Part of me is drawn to those who are fully invested in what they do; who bring their whole selves to it, without apology or pretension. Those who bring their inner selves, their interiority and vulnerability, struggles and triumphs, sweat and emotions, all in one glorious package, to their work and play.

Who are the people we admire, who would be our role models (if we were still at the age to have role models)? What makes us appreciate and value one person’s life work over another?

The answer, I think, gives us insight into ourselves. It says more about us than about them.