Stitching Seams

And Ironing Hankies

Many hours of my youth were spent in the basement of the house on Monaco, standing over my mother’s ironing board. I never did like the basement in that house. Emma didn’t have much of an eye for decorating, and the basement was dark anyway; but the reddish-orange earth tones down there contributed to the feeling of being underground. The “unfinished room,” which was a storage area and Dad’s workshop, had a concrete floor. The other rooms had one of those mottled linoleum tile floors.

Despite the subterranean atmosphere, I spent a great deal of time there. It was a respite from the wrath of Emma; and with the stereo down there, I could play my music and be in my own world. I spent innumerable hours down there sewing, which was a nice creative outlet, and it was a source of fascination to me to transform a piece of fabric into a garment.

Unfortunately, Emma appointed herself my sewing coach, and nothing short of perfection was good enough for her. She always had me ripping out seams, redoing what I had already done, and finishing all my seams by hand. I didn’t mind so much, because I had little else to do anyway, and this gave the appearance of being gainfully occupied while actually being off in my own world.

Emma was big on being “gainfully occupied,” and maybe that is why I took up ironing. That, and it was an opportunity to make some money. Unfortunately, Emma was into slave labor, and I think if I worked real hard, I could make fifty cents an hour. I started out with the items that didn’t matter so much, like Dad’s hankies, and as I improved my skills, I eventually progressed to his shirts.

Emma was also a formidable critic when it came to ironing. She would go through everything and pull out the rejects, which I had to redo before getting paid. Even the hankies Dad kept in his pocket to blow his nose on had to be perfect and often got returned for redoing. If there were any creases in Dad’s shirts, she would become irate, as if my faulty ironing job might cost him his job and cause us all to be cast out into the street.

In Emma’s world, miniscule actions could result in cataclysmic events. And I, the person charged with fending off these cataclysmic events for the salvation of the family, sacrificed my youth stitching seams and ironing clothes in the dark, dank basement of the house on South Monaco.