The heavy heat of summer left on a cool fall morning. On a desk in the downstairs office was an
open, green composition notebook and a newly sharpened Ticonderoga pencil. On page 1 was the date and a short list of
attainable goals for housecleaning, that day.
The house on Popcorn Road raised one happy eyebrow and creaked with joy.
She wrote the word, "mending." She's sewn since she was 7, and made most of her own clothes until she left home and got married. She went to work outside the home and made the hard adjustment to the reality of having a lot less free time. Her husband was hard on his clothes but he preferred it that way, wearing them out before moving on. Going through the laundry she would find the jeans and t-shirts with holes, the towels with raw edges, pillowcases with tears, broken zippers, tattered work jackets, underwear with loose elastic, and they would go into a pile. The growing pile was transferred to a larger box. Finally, an even larger tub. It had to end. Dragging the overladen tub bumpity-bump from the laundry room, up the stairs to the sewing room she sorted the easy work and set aside the more complicated projects. There was a heavy cotton remnant, printed with line drawings of farm animals. This would become the foundation of the hand sewn, 'visible me