National Story Project
With Paul Auster

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May 2001 -- Paul Auster reads a story from Donna Bronner of Santa Teresa, New Mexico.

Sewing Lessons

I had my first sewing lessons as a young child, sitting on the floor and stitching scraps of fabric into tenuous little creations. Above me, at the dining room table, my mother made the sewing machine fly. Every now and then, she would interrupt her sewing to snip me apart from the thing to which I'd sewn myself, or to show me how to spit on one thread tail and slip in back through the needle's eye. My child stiches resembled Morse code meandering across the fabric.

Along with my mother's lessons came her stories -- about how her mother could cut a man's suit pattern from a newspaper, and how, during the Depression, her own dresses were fashioned from flour sacks. I heard about a childhood filled with loss, about war, day-to-day survival, and my own birth. These stories were as natural as breathing, and I inhaled them the same way I inhaled the air.

By suppertime, finished or not, our sewing was put away to make room for a meal and the intrusions of family business. Next morning, out came the machine again and our projects continued. My official sewing lessons began in a seventh grade home economics class. A semester of sewing and a semester of cooking were required to prepare girls for their future roles as wives and mothers. I was eager to begin my first challenge of early adolescence.

My teacher, Mrs. Kelso, was a plain, stern woman with brown curls arranged tightly around her head. I was sure she had no imagination, since she wore only two-piece suits she had sewn from equally plain material. "Classic," she called them.

The sewing technique Mrs. Kelso struggled to impress upon our prepubescent sensibilities had little in common with my mother's. Mom would spread fabric on the floor, lay out a pattern (if she had one), stick in some pins, cut and sew. And a short time later, I would have a new dress.

Mrs. Kelso was by the book. Our first project -- a passage rite, it seemed -- was to sew snaps onto little squares of fabric. Each time we pulled the thread through the hole on the snap, we made a knot, pushing it close to the edge of the fastener with a thumb nail. My dingy knots didn't line up around the snap, so I had to repeat the exercise two more times. When I showed my mother what I'd learned, her response was, "Phooey, who's got time for that?"

Technique aside, the greatest difference between my two teachers was their philosophy of work. My mother whistled and clapped her hands. We sang Sixteen Tons with Tennessee Ernie Ford and marched in circles to a worn recording of The Gollywog's Cakewalk. One of the rare times I saw my mother weep was to a recording of Gypsy violin music as she adjusted gathers on the bodice of my dress.

To Mrs. Kelso, sewing was a science -- something you went to college to learn. She didn't allow singing, not even a radio. When my class was finally judged fit for real sewing, Mrs. Kelso picked a foolproof A-line, V-neck jumper: no buttons, zippers, darts or pizzazz. My mother helped me choose a lovely gray flannel for my jumper. I could hardly wait to cut into it.

Before we were allowed to remove fabric from the sack, Mrs. Kelso made us read the entire pattern instruction sheet and tested us on pattern terms. Finally, we spread our fabric on big tables, pinned the pattern pieces exactly as the layout instructions showed and cut along the solid lines, making little triangle bump-outs at the notches. (My mother never bothered with notches.) Mrs. Kelso made us hem the jumper to a length below our knees. The horrible outcome of this effort was evident in the mirror: I resembled a skinny chicken in a flour-sack dress. I don't remember my grade.

I brought my jumper home, vowing never to wear it. My mother salvaged the outfit by raising the hem to 1965 standards, adjusting the side seams to fit my slim body, and buying a pink crepe blouse with long ties that wrapped into a bow under my chin.

By the end of the semester with Mrs. Kelso, I didn't want to be a wife or mother. But, by the time I was 21, I was both and I didn't have time for most of what Mrs. Kelso had taught me. But my mother's lessons helped me to work quickly through each project. I learned to match my effort to the amount of baby spit-up that was likely to embellish the little bibs and shirts I made. While I sewed, I sang, and clapped my hands and played with my son. Pink Floyd replaced Tennessee Ernie Ford. Instead of sewing, my son built Lego castles at my feet. As he grew, my stories were replaced by his reading from the latest Star Trek or Piers Anthony novel.

Later, when time wasn't so precious and perfection could be justified by the cost of fine fabric, I recalled Mrs. Kelso's lessons -- and the lessons of other women. The knots anchoring my snaps lined up like soldiers. I found that notches were very useful.

Now my mother -- 80 this year -- calls long distance to get my advice on making a dust ruffle for her bed or a rain hat for her five-pound dog. I think this is her way of telling me that I, at last, have something to teach her.

– Donna Bronner
Santa Teresa, New Mexico