Internal Rumors

When I finally felt well enough to wander downstairs to my sewing
room this week, I discovered that while I was sick my sewing machine had
developed a glitch. After two days of trying to resolve the problem I
gave up and toted the thing to the local sewing machine
dealership/repair shop.

The proprietor of the shop is not known for
her people skills. While I explained the problem she stood well inside
my personal space comfort zone, looking straight into my eyes while I
talked. She looked briefly to my machine and when she looked back at me I thought I saw the eyes of my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Humber, who has been the subject
of one or two complete therapy sessions.

'Is your machine threaded now?' she asked, a bit on the shrill
side.Yes, I told her.

'Did you know that the thread isn't in the tension hook?' Still
staring at me, nearly nose to nose.

I told her I knew quite well that the thread was out of the tension hook -- a total lie. But I was channeling my own fourth-grade self and feeling vulnerable.

'Well have you forgotten how to thread your sewing machine?' The question
was so rude and so out of line and her eyes were so unblinking and I
said 'Oh come on' the way people do now.

But I blinked. And she didn't.

In that horrible instant standing there in the gaze of a
woman who owns a small sewing machine dealership in a small town in an
underpopulated state, I was judged and found stupid. We both knew in that instant that maybe, just maybe, I had forgotten how to thread my machine.

I forget a lot of things. It's not the 'now where did I put the keys' sort of thing. My forgetting is a bit more functional. You see, the autoimmune disease that catapulted me into the ranks of the chronic has affected my cognitive abilities. I know this for a fact because in order to qualify for Social Security Disability benefits I had to take a psych test. The man who gave me the test stopped me at one
point when I was desperately trying to remember if the cocker spaniel
dog with the Frisbee in its mouth was sitting with Grandpa earlier or
if it was in the car with Bobby. The doctor patted my hand, handed me
a cup of cold water and suggested I take a break. When I came back
from the break he had put away the testing materials and ushered me to
the door telling me he didn't think I needed to worry, that my
application should go through with no problems.

Now, on one hand, that's what I wanted. On the other hand, I did not
want to be told that I was a card short of a deck. Or maybe two.

Because I have good friends who are chronic, I know that a lot of us face the two-edged sword of being incompetent enough to qualify for disability but being so incompetent that you forget to take your meds. And go to appointments. And to pay bills.

The list goes on, but it becomes more personal and embarrassing.

People who don't know me well enough to know that I have this disease tend to write me off as a bit dotty or maybe even slow. That hurts. If I try to sound intelligent and on top of things, in the same place as everybody else, it just gets worse. I forget words at approximately the same rate as i try to think of them. Pretty disasterous if you're trying for witty repartee.

Learning to live with pain and loss of career and freedom has been hard, but nowhere near as hard as learning to bury my pride and live with the constant little 'slings and arrows' of unspoken insult.

I intend to ask my husband to collect my sewing machine without me. I'm thinking the propriator might be right. Maybe I forgot to push the thread through the tension hook. Or maybe my machine has a real problem. Either way I don't intend to submit myself to the judgmental glare of Mrs. Humber ever again.

And that's one promise to myself I don't think I'll forget.

Peace

Stitches in Time

Quilting came to me after I was diagnosed chronic, when I was at my lowest. It was a gift from my grandmothers.

I had lost my words and become fat and my hair was falling out in clumps. I had gone to a gray building filled with gray people and told them that I was not competent to ever work for money again. They believed me.

Until you have spent weeks gathering reams of evidence to prove that you are utterly useless to the world, you cannot understand how horribly and completely that hurts.

My mother had given me a nifty sewing machine a year or two earlier and I had taken a quilting class with a friend. For a year or more, the only quilting activity I worked on was collecting fabric. Then one chronic day when I was lower than low, the fabric called to me. I spread out my fabric, rejoiced in the beauty of it, and started cutting it into little pieces.

Quilting became my life raft. On days when I was drowning, when pain ruled, I could still fondle my lovely fabric and look at the books filled with photos of stunning quilts and dream of a better day.

As I said, quilting is a gift from my grandmothers. Meemaw was born in 1891 in Indian Territory Oklahoma. Granny was born in 1886 in Arkansas. Life was hard back then. Little girls learned to stitch as soon as they could hold a needle.

By the time I came along, life had gotten easier by far, but both still made their own clothes and clothes for my sisters and myself and quilts to keep us warm.

They let me go through button jar and play with rickrack and stack up the little scraps of fabric. Granny even let me pump the treadle to her old sewing machine while she stitched long, straight seams. They gave me quilts to wrap in, to be warm against long, cold Texas nights.

They taught me to love fabric, the look and feel of the stuff and the myriad ways it can go together. I forgot that lesson for many years. But when I was in need, it all came back.

Quilting saved me. It has become my passion. I am slow and not terribly good, but I love the way you can make something perfect and orderly. I also love how you can make something wild and free.

Thank you Meemaw. Thank you Granny. Once again you have wrapped me in quilts, warm and safe against the long, cold night.

Blessings,
Matriarch

What Time is It?

I never have enough time.

As a result, I almost never finish anything.

I took up quilting a couple years ago because 'being chronic' seemed like a lousy hobby. I took up quilting because it gave me the perfect cover for my true love, which is buying fabric. My vision of heaven has nothing to do with streets of gold and everything to do with row upon row of gorgeous bolts of fabric -- all available for free, of course.

I'm great at buying fabric. My quilting, however, leaves a bit to be desired. I struggle to make points match. My squares are wonky and my seams sometimes look like the trajectory of a car drven by a drunk celebrity. And I'm slow. Once a month I go to quilty meetings where lots of women and one man get together to show off our work. Each month, the same women stand up and show their work, all so perfect, all so finished. Each month I go home and look at my projects, lined up along the shelves like neglected urchins. I stand there in my sewing room wanting to take up the scissors and thread and wale away until i have finished a quilt or wall hanging and reached the enchanted land of embellilshments. But usually I just go to bed.

That, dear reader, is why I have so little to show in the way of finished work: I sleep a lot. Fatigue is my constant adversary. My kind of chronic has no reserves. If I do too much and get too tired, bad things happen. You don't want to know the details, trust me. So I try to get plenty of sleep.

I have to sleep 9 hours at night, and tend more toward 10. And I take a nap every afternoon. Always an hour, sometimes two and if I've pushed a bit in the morning, I might be out for three. And, if I was foolish yesterday and spent time in the sun, walked around town with a visiting friend, drove too much, etc ... then today I'm going to pay. I will wake up late, be exhausted by the effort of eating breakfast and need a morning nap. I will wake up shortly before noon, be exhausted by the effort of eating lunch and go back to sleep. Before dinner I'll wake up long enough to load the dishwasher and figure out something for supper that requires absolutely no energy and then I sleep until my husband comes home from work. After supper, of course, I'm ready for an early bedtime.

You can see how that would make it hard to get much done.

My dear friend J recently stopped being chronic. She went to her doctor one day, expecting a change in chemotherapy, and came home with a referral to Hospice. Christmas may not come this year.

They say that those who are about to die find they are living much more vividly. They take chances and do things they've always put off.

Well, J isn't jumping out of airplanes or climbing mountains. Instead, she's selling her personal possessions so she will have enough money to eat when she can't work anymore. Yeah, it sucks the big one. Life is so unfair.

In addition to being my friend, J is a quilter. She actually has made a living quilting the quilts that other people put together. When I talked to her yesterday, she was trying to figure what she can do in the time she has left. Some projects she just has to finish: a velvet quilt for a friend who took her in at a tough time, a wall quilt for her daughter, a stuffed teddy bear and matching bunny rabbit for a grandchild she may never see. The rest of her 'stash' of fabric will be sold to quilters who are gambling they have enough time to use it.

They say people who know they are dying have more wisdom and insight into life's hard questions. So I complained to J about my lack of time, how I sleep too much and just don't have time to finish all the projects I have started. I asked her what to do, how to manage, what is the answer to my frustration? My friend shook her head, took a quick look at the stacks of fabric she will be selling in the coming weeks and gave me the full force of all her insight and wisdom.

'Work faster,' she said.

**********************

I realized today that at the end of my last post, instead of signing off 'Peace and Blessings' I had written 'Peach and Blessings.' It may have been a simple typo, or may have been some sort of associative slip caused by the sweet, juicy, bursting with flavor peach I was eating while I wrote. Either way, I sort of like the whole idea. After all, what could be more of a blessing than a perfect piece of summer fruit? On that note, I will leave you until next time with this benediction:

Peaches and Blessings and All Good Things!
Matriarch