Grandma Taught Me How to Sew - Revised
I wrote this piece about 4 years ago. Upon Grandma’s passing yesterday, it was time for a revision… My grandma taught me how to sew...nearly twenty-five years ago, in the July heat, in her non-air-conditioned farm house. For several days, summer after summer, I would stay at Grandma's house until we had completed an outfit. Her house seemed to bake in the July, muggy, Missouri heat. I remember just hoping for a breeze to come through the bedroom window where I slept at night. I would make my way to the kitchen each morning to find her reading the paper, drinking her coffee, and smoking a cigarette. She would make me a bowl of a yummy, sugary cereal – just not Uncle Rod’s special kind of yummy, sugary cereal. And we would have breakfast and chat about what we needed to accomplish on my outfit for the day. She taught me how to read a pattern; how to lay out the pattern pieces properly on the fabric; to pay close attention to every detail on each pattern piece; to...
