Generation

My mom made a lot of my clothes, growing up. I remember going with her to the fabric store, running my fingers along the different-textured bolts on the shelf. They were as tall as I was. Flipping through the big pattern books, dragging my mom by the hand to see the bolt of lavender checkered cloth--I couldn't wait for it to take shape into my very own mama-made dress. Made on her slender black Singer sewing machine.

We just don't do that anymore. Moms like me are too busy checking our email, writing our blogs (!), and answering our cell phones. And knitting--after all, we can take that with us. It doesn't tie us down like sewing machines, pin cushions, bobbins, and patterns. With knitting, you can grab it and go. Off and away.

Beside her slender black sewing machine (the one she still uses), Mom had a pink plastic ferris wheel to hold her thread. It had different compartments for the different size spools. Some would stand up straight on posts; others would recline in little spool-shaped beds. I loved to play with that ferris wheel, spinning it as hard as I could, many colors of thread first making a blur, then flying out in all directions. Or sometimes I'd move it slowly, each row of colors making its dignified way to the top, then relinquishing, cycling down, giving up its topmost spot to the next ascending row.

Mom's moving to a rest home in two weeks, and she gave that little ferris wheel to my sister Janet. Janet doesn't sew any more than I do, but that pink plastic gizmo means just as much to her as it does to me, and she'll make sure it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

One row slowly descends, as the others rise up.

Down, and up. Down, and up.

And my heart cries out.

I'm not ready!