mending musings

These are my musings while I sat and did a simple chore that has been waiting for me to tend to it for almost one month.

When I was in eighth grade and supposed to be taking the practical arts block where I would be learning keyboarding, wood shop and home economics I wrote a letter to the powers that be to be able to take both choir and a full year of art instead. I will learn to sew...don't worry!

Well, I have tried to learn to sew, ever since, but I still wouldn't say that I can sew very well at all. I received a wonderful sewing machine for my 30th birthday, and I only used it a little before it had to be packed away and stored whilst we are living abroad...the plug is incompatible here and the motor would burn out even if we got a transformer. My heart gives a little sigh when I think of that sewing machine all boxed up.

Anyway, my son has been asking me if I would mend his "trousers" (pants in England are underwear, my kids always say trousers) which he tore when he fell off his scooter. They have been sitting in my to deal with pile for a month.

Tonight I fixed them with the sewing needles my mom gave me that had been her mothers, and maybe her mother's. On the package it says "Coat of Arms Needles...Finest Quality...Made in Redditch, England" It seems a little poetic to me that my grandmother, who would never have had trouble in simply mending a pair of trousers split at the knee, had these needles made in England in her possession and that somehow they made their way back here, where her granddaughter attempted to mend her great grandson's very favorite pair of trousers that were torn on English soil.
I thought I wouldn't go into this, but I will...it also is so poetic to me that we are here at all, when my ancestors --14 generations ago, came to America on the Mayflower...and here we are living in England. I feel a little bit of family connection in all this...though we are far away, there are reminders everywhere.