The Lesson

Mama loved creating things. When insomnia would strike, she would arise and do handicrafts by the light of kerosene lamp. One night she even made a Christmas tree out of a Readers Digest.

She was a master sewer, but her forte was crocheting. In our farm community, 99.9% of the women crocheted. Mother’s handiwork was so good that the local stores would buy hers for resale. As the only daughter she was determined that I learned that craft as well as embroidering and sewing.

My parents also saved everything for reuse. It was their way of life. What one could re-use, adapt, or remake meant that money was not spent. Mama even saved the paper and string the stores would use to wrap the packages when a purchase was made. The paper was put together as a booklet for my brother and me to color our own drawings. She would use it to cover the table surface for different tasks. When she made homemade noodles, she would put out the paper, then the wax paper, then the flour and place the pastry on top of the flour to roll out, let set, and cut before drying.

I had to wonder why she was saving the string. She would attach the string to the previous saved string and begin to roll them into a ball. Very little of the string would be the same size in diameter or the same color: different shades of white, ecru, and yellow. By the time I was twelve she had amassed a shoebox or more of rolled string. I should have known something evil was planned.

At the age of twelve, Mama was teaching me embroidering and the art of sewing on her treadle sewing machine. All of it was a chore to me as it took time away from reading or the outdoors. I really didn’t enjoy any of it, but was becoming rather proficient at the simpler steps. I had not graduated to petit fours in embroidering, but could at least do more than outline. Sewing I hated, but endured.

One summer afternoon she announced. “Now it is time for you to learn to crochet.” She did not bring out the colorful crochet thread she purchased. She took out one of the string-filled boxes from her closet, and then she patted the spot on the sofa next to her.

My protests simply raised her ire and she glared at me with those black eyes. “You will learn. Now pay attention.” She began to chain.

“Now it’s your turn. Put the thread over your index finger like this and hold the crotchet needle thus.” And so it went. First the chain and then the different sized posts until she decided I was proficient enough to attempt making a dishrag. Of course, it was still the balls of different colored string of different diameters knotted at wherever they had ended.

You cannot imagine the looks of that dishrag when my inept attempt was finished. It had to be the most misshapen, lumpy dishrag ever produced. I cringed inside when I handed it to her as a finished product and waited for her critique. None came.

Tears gathered in Mama’s eyes and she held that lumpy dishrag to her chest and started for their bedroom.

“Where are you going with that?” I assumed she would throw it away, but her response was quite different.

“It goes into my cedar chest with the rest of my treasures. It is the first thing my daughter has ever crocheted.”