Through the winding streets of a quiet neighbourhood on Saturday, July 27th, 2014, I bought an antique sewing machine at a garage sale. I was taking the children out for a day of this and that. Their father was returning after six months of leaving home to clean out his things from the house, not a pleasant thought. We got through the day nicely with a Japanese lunch afterwards and a mall crawl and chocolate bark sharing.
I paid a sizeable amount of money after asking my daughter if she'd keep it after me. Of course she assured me, my child, the old soul historian. I remembered threading the needle for Teeamma and wanting to pump the foot rest. I remember the stories of the clothes she'd stitched for my birth.
Back to the present, what would I do? The machine folded into a desk, I somehow knew it would. My grandmother's memoir will get written soon and my thesis too at this desk. I can sense the connection.
The next day, the woman I bought it from delivered it at home with a story of the machine neatly written out and tucked into the drawer.
Now the house doesn't feel like a twelve year old home new home of a family without history.
It feels like old homes in India with some old furniture in it. It feels like a little slice of Shantikunj. My sons wallet and keys are in one drawer. Pens highlighters, postage stamps in another. The sewing machine my grandmother had or her cupboard made of Burma teak, I'd never have ever received, not with the overarching reach of patriarchy and entitlement that's embedded in minds I was born around. The brothers would get it all whether they valued it or not. And their wives would show these pieces off as antiques while only I know that they recoiled from Amma's touch on their freshly painted walls that she held on to for support or the smell of her salve when her back hurt.
So here, far away in a land I now call home, I'm connected to the memories of someone else's mother and the clothes that she must have stitched. I filled out my pension valuation form there. Felt stronger somehow. I can do this, one stitch at a time. And we will now remember this day as the one when we got the antique sewing machine.
(C) 2014
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