The Shoebox Sewing Box
From the “Work in Progress” blog series
2019
I open the Nike shoebox, the sewing box my mother had before she died. On the outside is what’s left of a label stating “USA 10 ½,” much too big for my mother, and “Reg $59.95” but marked down to $39.95. Oddly, inside is a smaller Bass shoebox. In black marker on masking tape on one side of the box, not in my mother’s handwriting, is “Sewing Box.” I don’t remember ever having a conversation with her (or anyone) about the box. I remember only that the supplies within it seemed like something I could use, a good thing to keep, so I did. I believe the box is at least thirty-five years old; it might be closer to forty. It’s in pretty good shape for much-travelled, middle-aged cardboard.
The Bass box within the Nike box holds a blue plastic container with “Johnson Baby Wash Cloths” across the top. It’s possible my mother used them, but I know I did after my son was born. The container likely dates from 1990 or 1991. My mother died in 1988.
There are samples of Maggie’s Organic Cotton, a company launched in 1992—so they aren’t right too—and a vertical roll of thread with needles, the kind of travel sewing kit my ex-husband would have picked up on a business trip. There are Singer Iron-on Patches—and spools of Woolworth’s Size 50 Polyester thread. They could be my mother’s. But I have also used iron-on patches on blues jeans of all shapes and sizes for years, long after she was dead. I am not sure about the Dritz Glovers/leather Hand Needles for $1.39 or the Heavy Duty Snaps from EZ International for $4.00. Hers or mine?
I put the lid on the Nike box and take in what is now clear—and probably has been for years. The box isn’t hers. Every time I’ve grabbed a needle and spool of dark thread to replace a button, mend a hem, stitch a rip in someone’s slacks, it’s possible I was using a remnant from her, but more likely, was using something that I (or someone else) acquired over the years. Does it matter that not all in the box is hers? Every-day activities, life changes, random shopping have likely added to or subtracted from it. A generation has passed and another is passing—moves across country and from one home to another have occurred since she could have used the box. Maybe it started out her box but now is something else. For me, if something in the box is hers, it is still something of her I have. But what if none of it—what if nothing in the box—is or ever was—hers?
Sewing is something she did, and by holding onto her sewing paraphernalia or some vestiges of it, I kept part of her with me. Inside the box, I see the accoutrements of her sewing self.
Underneath the window behind the dining table was a dark-wood console that held the Singer sewing machine. It sat next to the hutch with the china and silverware, platters and glasses, used for guests and holidays. The drawer on the left side of the console held a tape measure, marking chalk, bobbins for the machine. At the end of a sewing session, she could fold the machine into the table—and the top would become a repository for stuff, fabric or patterns or the detritus of everyday life, until the next time she needed to sew. She lined drapes or made curtains, replaced a hem, sewed a shirtwaist dress, and sometimes she’d show herself through an unexpected spark of color or an embellishment. She never taught me to sew—I’m not sure why—maybe she figured I wasn’t the sewing type. Or maybe I was and it was just one more thing we missed in each other. Maybe I keep the needles and thread that I believe belonged to her to connect to what might have been.
There was also a small red wicker sewing box, and I have no idea what happened to it. I only remember the Nike box (or thought I did), so I claim it. It’s what I have.
2020
In Spring, in pandemic lockdown, I take on a massive clean-up. In a back bedroom, I lift the top of a very old cupboard, which I might not have opened in twenty years, and there is the pin cushion in the shape of a large strawberry, a small berry dangling from the top to make sure we get what we are seeing, straight pins with silver and blue and black tops stuck in it.
It’s inside my mother’s sewing box, a beige box with a lid that does not have any company branding on it. I have no idea what the box originally held, but it is stuffed now. In it, among other things, are Clarke’s Hand Sewing Assortment (needles) for 80 cents; two maroon Nouveaute buttons for 27 cents; an unopened packet of White Bias Tape (5 yds) for 25 cents; a bright green zipper; a small white envelop of extra shirt buttons; black cutting shears, so worn the black enamel is stripped away, revealing silver underneath; a paper bag from Monique Fabrics with buttons from La Mode for 60 cents; Yards of Name Tape with my sister’s name on it, addressed to Robert Shearer (my father), not to my mother, a choice she often made; White 1/2 inch elastic straps from Sears; a No 675 Dritz Dressmaker’s Marking Pencil; the stub of a 555 Anchor Surperite No. 2 pencil; a receipt from Fabric Circle from 10-11-76 for two buttons ($1.26 with tax); a square of woven/textured purple fabric, a range of distinctive stitch types sewn across it. I have a vague remembrance of it—but can’t remember what the fabric was used for. My mother sewed a purple dress with a short jacket for me when I was about 12 or 13—is it that? The color feels right; the fabric doesn’t, too heavy for a springtime dress.
There are also spools and spools of Talon thread in bright pink, lavender, coral, light blue, gold as well as all the expected blacks, browns, whites, and grays, and an empty spool for color 905 (which Google tells me is orchid).
I’m curious about the box, but I don’t know if I can embrace it as my mother’s. The other box—the Nike box in its longtime place on the shelf in my closet—is already my mother’s sewing box. That it is really an emblem, not an artifact of my mother’s life, has little sway.
I take out items one by one, carefully look through them, and then put them back in the box. I can’t fit the lid over the top. The strawberry pin cushion sits up too high, letting me know the items in the box can’t be hidden away. If I open the cupboard, they’ll be there. They’ll be visible.
I don’t know why I am unhappy to find this box. It could be a relief. Instead it feels like one more burden—to have to navigate truth when I was certain of reality. I’d prefer to stay with what I thought was real instead of what is. I put the box back inside the cupboard. I close the top. I know now my mother’s sewing box lives—but I’ve already made a connection to—I am already attached to the fictional, maybe I should say, fabricated one.
I tell myself it is a time when accuracy matters—when we need to rely on fact (not the big lie, fake news, partial truth)—and here I am shying away, resisting it.
And yet—does it really matter which one I hold on to?
There is also this—What if neither the Nike Box nor the Beige Box are really my mother’s? What if the amalgam of things added to or taken from them over time make them something else or something new? I have this nagging feeling about the strawberry pin cushion—was it really hers? It feels right to say so, but I don’t have a reliable memory of it and can’t actually place it with her. What if it’s mine—and years ago, for whatever reason, I placed it with her things and now I can’t separate it from them?
I remember after her long illness the quickest of death—and a rapid giving away of things. When or how the box got from her closet to the cupboard or how the other shoebox became my substitute for it, I have no idea and have no desire to probe remembrances or uncoil memories. I’d like to have something to look at and think “a piece of my mother is imbued here”—and it’s not that simple. Some facts are clear; some realities aren’t. That’s what’s true.
What to do with that?
Here’s my leap. Please join me:
I am trying to figure out what I am saying in this piece, and I am impatient.
My mind and calendar tell me I have only so much time to give to this piece, so when I sit down to work, I am busy thinking about how quickly I can get the most done. I am focused on resolving the piece, rather than evolving it—and I know I won’t ever resolve it if I don’t allow it to evolve. For example, I rush through the use of the words remnant and emblem, but the piece is trying to tell me I need
To see what arises in me when I use each word and then reflect on what each means to me (What remembrance or experience does the word evoke, and how do I understand it?)
To look up each word. Be reminded of what each means and how it is used in multiple contexts.
Then I can know more about if my sentences work or if I need to rework or cut them, and/or how to interrelate my experience and uses of words—or take my ideas a new direction. I can’t just blow past the words.
I am also impatient with what this piece is saying, where it is leading me, with my contradictory feelings/experience, and the too-much work I feel it will take to discover and explain the complexity I feel. I resist the “facts” it is providing me—and the conflicts they are creating in me. How could I show my resistance to what is real or accurate, while also accepting it, using it—and maybe even learning from it? Do I really want to take on all that?
Then, I realize the core of my impatience is this: Just how inaccurate is my memory--what if nothing in the piece is correct—or even real? For a moment—for a while—I forgot (neglect, set aside) my responsibility to the work. I think of artmaking as an inquiry-driven conversation between the maker and the art, and the quality of the conversation ultimately shapes the work. So if I am rushing, half-listening, distracted, I can’t hear all the work offers me or the questions it asks. And—if I am also focused on the wrong things—like trying to resolve what I can’t know or trying to dismiss my views or experience—I, of course, want to get out of the process and away from the work as soon as possible.
How can I work with the unreliability of memory and the tensions that creates within this piece?
I decide to make time for, stop resisting, and acknowledge them.
Then the writing gets easier and more engaging. And I feel less time-driven.
Memory Box in Words: For several years, I created work in text and image, some as stories in boxes. I’ve also wanted to see if I could box (contain) experience relying only on words, and these pieces are part of the project. I want to simplify a memory, pare it down to what there is room for, while also filling the box with all that needs to be said.
A key to simplifying for me is to first see accurately. I visualize my experience and write to capture the details of what I see as accurately as I can. I also define, define, define. I want to understand the words I use and how they relate to the details I have. The more I learn about what the work (as well as the words) mean, the more I can write to it clearly.
One final impatience: I sorted through drafts of five or six different pieces before I settled into creating this work for this blog. None of the pieces felt quite right, but it wasn’t the pieces that weren’t right. It was me. I was impatient to get the work done, so when I decided the focus of my leap would be the impatience and reasons for it, I realized I had something to say to you and I could work on any of the pieces, so I did.
Artwork by Neil Freese