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 mending' on his jeans. The farm animal print would face the world, symbolic of his care for hens and chicks, kids and goats. Sometimes a glimpse of the pattern showed through a hole in the jeans , but more often, they were carefully anchored with bulky sashiko stitches. Often, new tears appeared above or below this work until the patches were stacked 2 deep. He said the mended jeans felt like quilts around his knees, comfortable.
The lost-cause t-shirts were cut into strips, making tug-of-war toys for the Terrier. The better t-shirts were patched with matching fabric and thread. The rule here was she had to use goods on hand. No driving into town to wander the aisles of the fabric store.
The hum of the sewing machine filled the room like a purr. Distractions, interruptions, procrastinations, daydreams, and a lovesick cat came to visit. The work continued at an easy pace until the pile went down, and the newly mended clothes and towels were returned to daily rotation. The house on Popcorn Road loved the sound of the sewing machine. It began to feel drowsy and invited the cat to set itself in a sunbeam by the window. Together, they took a well-deserved, mid-afternoon nap.