The Sewing Box

I knew I would buy the box even before I opened it. It was the textured pattern. Lace tatted from strands of golden wheat. Someone had centered the lace on top, and on each side had set it with glue, leaving an inch-wide border all around. Someone had stained this border deep red, the color of dried blood, of life exited. Someone had taken care.The box was made of wood. Eight dollars at my favorite antique store on the Washington Palouse. It could easily fit my grandmother's handwritten home economics book from 1933, her recipes for Swedish pancakes and rice pudding. Or my great-aunt's handkerchiefs, all thirty-two of them, embroidered violets and roses she once pressed into triangles and tucked into the breast pocket of her waitress uniform. When I looked inside, I discovered a sewing box. Lined in red satin, ribbons stapled into the lid to hold needles, scissors, and thread. I also discovered the remnants of a man's life. I call him Richard.He kept the 1932 certificate he received from the Oakland Junior Traffic Reserve for his “efforts in preventing accidents” and a newspaper clipping from 1934—the Oakland Tribune's report of an armed bank robbery, which he witnessed as a boy of sixteen: We saw them run for the car . . . get in and drive madly down the street. He kept the announcement for his 1936 high school graduation in Davis, California, alongside an invitation to his wedding the following year. He kept the certificate he received in 1930 “for having attained the standard proficiency in penmanship for the Low Seventh Grade,” though the box holds nothing written by him. Handwritten fragments of any kind are scarce: an obituary for a couple named Martin and Carolyn who, in 1856, wed in Berlin and immigrated to the United States; a letter from Richard's father dated December 1939: I am a sick man. . . . My left testicle is swollen four times its normal size. . . . I know one thing, God my judge, it is caused from nothing to do with women as I have not been exposed. . . . Remember if anything does happen to me, you get the insurance.Richard was twenty-one, two years married with a son. Decades later, after he and his wife passed on, it may have been this son who sorted their possessions and decided what to keep, what to sell. Did he set the sewing box in the “for sale” pile without thinking to look inside, or was a stranger hired to do this unpleasant work? Maybe he eagerly parted with his heritage, glad to finally let it all go.I did not have children. One day, strangers will rummage through my belongings. When they find my journals, they may flip through them, pause at the words I penned at twelve, I am determined to lose at least ten pounds this summer. At fifteen, misunderstood, remaining silent. Seventeen, tonight he told me he could see through me. These strangers, they won't know to read between the lines. The twelve-year-old was developing an eating disorder that would last into her twenties. Each day, the fifteen-year-old ate only what she could count on one hand. By seventeen, she had dropped thirty pounds by making herself purge what she did eat. They might throw the journals in the trash or put them up for sale. Maybe they'll keep them, these records of my private life, though I doubt it.Richard kept the operating instructions for a Sears Roebuck power mower; a 1954 receipt for a pinto horse purchased for $225 “plus $7 board, $5 delivery, $6.75 tax”; an anniversary card signed simply “Paul and Della”; and a tourism brochure for New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. Maybe, as I often do, he didn't intend to keep some of these items but tucked them away, forgotten beneath a stack of photographs. I count them. Twenty-seven photos in all. Richard's parents as children, he and his brother as young boys. There's a photo of him in profile. He looks about twelve and wears a sweater with a triangular pattern along the bottom hem, black hair combed off his brow, a young Cary Grant. Dark eyes focused on something outside the frame, the boy does not smile. Tight-lipped, he keeps a secret.I find just one sewing item buried at the bottom of the box, an unused card of 49-cent hook-and-eye fasteners. Did the box belong to Richard's wife before she passed it onto him? Maybe he didn't fill it up at all. Maybe it was his wife who gathered these mementos into one place for safekeeping.My grandmother's sewing basket is made of white wicker and stands on the floor. I keep it in my bedroom, filled with a rainbow of embroidery thread I never use. When I was a girl, my grandmother tried to teach me a basic stitch on her black antique sewing machine. She sat with me at her kitchen table, threaded the bobbin, and showed me how to press the foot pedal—not too hard or it'll move too fast. After she died, one of my aunts promised it to me. But then my aunt developed Alzheimer's and moved from her house in the woods to a small apartment. It was up to her son to downsize her possessions. He told my mother that he was so overwhelmed with the move he made repeated trips to the town dump. This is likely where the sewing machine ended up.Other than a crude hand-stitch to mend hems that have come undone, I haven't learned to sew. I tell myself that if I had my grandmother's sewing machine, I would learn. But this isn't true. My mother bought me a sewing machine several years ago, and it still sits in its box, unused, in a closet. It's buried beneath the vintage suit my husband's great-uncle gave him before he died—it's good quality, Son—certain he would wear the flared houndstooth trousers and double-breasted navy-blue jacket with the gold anchor buttons.My mother once called me our family's keeper. I keep the things no one else knows what to do with. My grandmother's baptism certificate and high school diploma. Her death certificate and Social Security card. My grandparents’ marriage license from 1937, the same year Richard and his wife wed. The deed to my grandparents’ north Idaho home, purchased in 1950 for $8,500. My great-aunt's slides from her once-in-a-lifetime trip to Hawaii in the 1960s, the strapless dress with the palm tree pattern and the pink shell necklace she brought home as souvenirs. Everything stacked high on shelves, tucked deep into drawers—I forget where.A game I sometimes play: If I could only save things that fit inside Richard's sewing box, what would I keep? My husband's passport, and mine. Our marriage license and Social Security cards. The florist card that came with the dozen red roses he sent me at school when I was seventeen, inscribed with the words of e e cummings: since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you. Our wedding invitation on which we printed the full poem. A yellow rose petal from the wedding bouquet my mother-in-law made for me. A square of yellow chiffon from the 1950s prom dress—another antique store find—I wore for the ceremony. Newspaper clippings from the small engine plane crash that killed my fifty-six-year-old grandfather, my uncle, and my aunt's fiancé in 1983 while they were on a timber scouting trip in the Idaho panhandle. The letter my great-grandmother—a former logging camp nurse near the north fork of the Clearwater River—sent me, also in 1983, when I was seven: Write to me sometime. I get very lonesome if I don't get any mail. The tie clip that belonged to her husband Oliver, which holds a miniature photo of my great-grandmother and my mother, then a girl, when I open the ornate “O” on top. Handwritten birthday cards from my grandmothers. Pressed four-leaf-clovers from the patch I discovered beside my front porch during COVID lockdown. The green stone necklace from my father; my mother's star-garnet ring. The prettiest of my great-aunt's handkerchiefs, which when I unfold them take me back to her house, to the scent of dust and warm afternoon sun. And, of course, my grandmother's home economics book, which still smells of sugar and Crisco when I crack it open. Then there are the journals—six of them—a collection of secrets from a self-destructive teenager with low self-esteem. And the book of poems I wrote in sixth grade, for which I received my first and only trophy. My junior high and high school yearbooks and all of the photos of friends and family, grandparents and great-grandparents, photos of my parents as children and young adults, of weddings, trips to the Oregon Coast, the Salmon River, the Clark Fork River, Flathead Lake, Canada, Copenhagen, hundreds upon hundreds tucked inside albums and boxes and drawers, and—here I must pause.I know these remnants of my life will not fit into the sewing box. I'm reminded of the time capsules my brother and I used to bury in the far corner of our backyard as children. Once we used one of our mother's old handbags for a vessel, though I can't remember what we felt necessary to keep. I mostly remember digging it up a few days later, anxious to see our valuables still safely tucked inside. Then we had to begin again. This is what I always must do with my game. Begin again. What must I keep? More importantly, why must I hold onto these things, and for whom? I'm in my forties and in good health. If the long lives of my parents and grandparents are any indication, I'll live a long time too. I'll keep collecting.I keep Richard's sewing box alongside my other belongings. I'm the keeper. His documents will stay where they are, stored inside, on a shelf in my home. One day, after I'm gone, someone will find the box. As with everything else I own, they will throw it away unopened or set it in the “for sale” pile. Or, curious about the secrets it holds, they might open it up and wonder at the frayed fibers between the present and the past and how the strands of this man's life became threaded with mine.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.