The Inheritance of our Hands
My Aunt Georgia is an exceptional knitter. She loves all things fiber, from dying and spinning to knitting up heirloom garments. When I was pregnant with each of my biological children, she knitted the most adorable and wondrous little sweaters for my babies. I treasured those sweaters, delighted in dressing my daughters in them, and saved them in the hopes of passing them down to grandchildren one day. They are a beautiful inheritance of love and prayers for the future. I look at them now and wonder if my girls were really ever that small, that fragile.
As I have begun blogging on this sewing pattern theme, the thing that has most often struck me is how many people have had the same reaction: “Oh! My [insert beloved relative] was a wonderful sewer! I still have xyz item they made me and such wonderful memories!” Handmade clothing—not designer-labeled, not exceptionally tailored by a couturier, but ordinary clothing—lives in many of our memories as an act of love. There is an old Celtic proverb: “Milking the cow is holy.” Even seemingly mundane tasks, like sewing a dress or a knitting a baby sweater, have a beauty, a significance, a divine element. There is an abundance in receiving another’s creative love that lasts in the mind, that remains in the heart.
Additionally, when we create clothing for a specific person at a specific point, we are pouring love onto that body in that moment. We become aware of each individual body in a meaningful way. We learn the body’s nuances, the way it is shaped, the way fabric drapes over it. We aren’t going to the store and hoping we can find something made to an arbitrary scale of “standards” that works with an un-average height, an un-average torso length, an un-average shoulder slope. The act of creating clothing can be, inherently, a way of loving our physical selves as they are instead of frustratedly wondering why we can’t be “average.” NO one is average! Every body is unique and beautiful and quirky and changes over a lifetime.
I think that in the past, I’ve struggled with sewing clothing feeling frivolous or selfish. Feeling too “worldly” as we Christians like to say negatively. Yet here we are, in our bodies, on this earth, living this life. We are surrounded by cultural ideals of beauty that are unattainable to 99.9% of the population. We are surrounded by irresponsibly-produced, disposable clothing that pollutes the planet and enriches corporations. We are surrounded by unending judgments of our appearance and the complete impossibility of making everyone happy. What if sewing clothing is an act of rebellion against all of that? What if making clothing is an act of love in the face of judgment and hate and corruption? What if we can look at any body on anybody and say, “Hey! You matter. You are special as you are. You are worthy of love.” What if we can leave an inheritance of love made by our own two (un-average) hands?
