July 23, 2021

My Journey to God

I Ask My Grandmother to Teach Me to Sew

She raises the fibrous fabric
in her left hand
and shimmies it under the presser foot,
careful to push away my fingers aching
to help until I “know the difference between
the presser foot and the foot pedal.”

Her lithe hands splay across the cotton
clasping it steady as a rock,
careful not to pull it too taut
yet snug enough
for the stitches to hold true.

My nose tickles in preparation
to sneeze, but I press my tongue
to the roof of my mouth, like my brother taught me,
and recite “watermelon” three times
to convince my nose to hold in its blow.
I refuse to miss even one second of her tutorial.

In one second, the thread could get jammed
in the spool or come loose from the needle’s eye,
and if I sneeze now, I’ll have no clue
how to re-thread it just right.

Her crinkled eyes smile at me as she says,
“From the spool pin around this series of hooks,
pulled down and through the needle.
That’s how you thread the sewing machine.”

With a slight shift of the fabric
to keep it from bunching up, I tap
the foot pedal and still feel her hands on mine,
guiding me through
how to stitch up my life.

By Julianna Connelly
 

(Julianna Connelly is a member of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Indianapolis.) †

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