On Deep Loss, the Creative Spirit, and Joy

I once asked my mother if she missed her own mother, who died two months after I was born. "Every day," she said. "Not one day goes by without me thinking of her and wishing I could just pick up the phone and call her."

Her sorrow over the loss of her mother was evident in her voice, even twenty years after my nana's death. I thought this level of grief was exclusive to the special relationship she had with her mother - they seemed more alike and thus, closer, than I was to her. I didn't know that one day I would feel the same way.

Yesterday, on the anniversary of my mother's death, I reflected on how even ten years after her death, I still feel the loss deeply. But how I feel the loss takes different forms each year, depending on what's happening in my life. You know that last year, as I went through breast cancer treatment just as she did thirty years before, I was filled with sorrow and regret. This year, however, I felt something much different. Let me tell you some stories that will explain.

I need to start with sewing machines. My mother was a sewer since at least her teenage years; I have a picture of her in 1944, standing proudly in a fashionable ensemble that she made herself. It was make it yourself or do without at that time. But she also just plain loved making something exactly the way she wanted it.

When I was a girl, my sewing experiences began with threading the sewing machine needle for her. (I never knew why you'd need someone else to do that until, oh, last year.) Soon I was spending hours at fabric stores with her, fingering pretty fabrics and looking through heavy pattern books. Under her tutelage, I sewed my first dress at age eight: a dress just the way I wanted it. I was a good student.

Through most of my school years, my mother continued to sew clothes for me, and in fact she sewed all the costumes for the high school's production of Sound of Music. But by the time I was a teenager, depression and illness robbed her of the energy and motivation to do what she loved. She still bought fabric and patterns but did not sew.

Just over ten years ago, in an effort to regain some of her joy, she indulged in an expensive Pfaff sewing machine. I remember well her delight over this purchase and everything she told me it could do. Regrettably, she never got to enjoy the machine before she died.

After her death, I realized that this sewing machine was probably the only thing of hers that I absolutely wanted. I even asked for it, which was a big step for me. But my father held onto it, ostensibly in case he 'needed to hem some pants.' He offered instead the figurines and china teacups that he didn't want cluttering up the étagère in the living room. At one point he said that maybe he could get the machine appraised and then sell it to me for its value. After all, it was expensive. You wouldn't want to just give it to you daughter.

I must have been tapping into my inner pirate on the day I just...well...took it. I would say I'm not proud of myself, but actually, I am! I knew she wanted me to have the machine. I knew she would be shocked if I had to buy it off my father, and frankly, I'd never be able to afford it.

I set up the sewing machine on the same little fold-up table (with the walnut laminate finish) that she used when I was a girl. Since moving to my current house, I've spent time practicing with it and trying to understand its ways, as well as sewing a few things for the house. I like the potential of it and having it always at the ready.

However, when I set up a new worktable in the studio this week, I realized that I was going to need to take the sewing machine down and just put it up when I'm working on a project. While telling my sister about this yesterday morning, I found out that her sewing machine (an older one of our mother's) needed service that she couldn't afford. I suggested I loan her the Pfaff one for a while.

And then I felt it: my mother's joy. Her daughters were sharing her beloved sewing machine! Debbie and I fell into a conversation about what we imagined doing with the sewing machine and it turned out - independent of each other - we had the same ideas of making handbags. I'm sure mom must have loved that.

Once we settled plans for getting the sewing machine to my sister, I told her what I was excited about that morning. My handyman agreed to come on Friday to remove the upper cabinets in my studio, so that I can repaint and put up new shelves! In my head, the story was the he wouldn't be available for weeks, so his call triggered a little jig around my studio, with lots of jazz-hand action and a song that featured lyrics like, "yes-yes-YES!"

When I told Debbie that now I just needed to find the right shade of turquoise for the walls, she laughed and said, "Mom must love that!" At that, I remembered how my mother always wanted everything to be turquoise or teal or some shade of blue-green. It became sort of an inside joke in the family, one that I even joined in on. And yet...today, I have a bedroom that I lovingly painted metallic lagoon blue, and a studio that is soon to be turquoise. Huh.

If this was twenty years ago...or even ten years and one month ago...I'd be mortified that I was anything like my mother. I was too locked in the mother-daughter struggle to see comparisons as anything less than a threat to my independent spirit. Now? Now I smile. Now it is perfectly okay.

After talking to my sister, I walked through my newly organized, creatively expectant studio and reflected upon how this is always the place where I can feel my mother's presence. Oh, not this particular studio, but whatever place is serving as my creation station at the time. I remember how, shortly after my mother's death, my father said that he just couldn't feel her any more. He felt she must be somewhere else. I knew exactly where she was - in my studio! I could stand in the middle of my space and just wait quietly, and then I would feel her spirit move about me. I could feel that again yesterday and it warmed my heart.

I have reached an age now where I really understand what my mother wanted for me. She wanted me to be safe, to show my brilliance to the world (as a mother sees her daughter's brilliance), and I believe she really wanted me to be happy. Yesterday, I felt safe, brilliant, and happy, and I felt her joy. I can't think of a better tenth anniversary than that.

Love you, mom!

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