When Tools Fail

It's been a while since I had a hobby that required anything but myself. I've been focusing on my novels for so long that I haven't created anything but words in years. Words don't require tools, not real ones. If I run out of paper, I get some more. It's plentiful and cheap. If I run out of ink, there's always another pen nearby. Pens are like bunnies or subway rats, especially the kind with a company name on them. 

The older I get, the more I find myself wanting to master the arts tying me to Iowa, to my mother and grandmother and aunts. It wasn't conscious when I started gardening. I thought I was just trying to make my yard look better, but the more I explored it and discussed it with my family, I realized it was a bridge carrying me back home to the farm. Last year, I asked for a sewing machine for Christmas. It wasn't until I started using it this fall to try to make placemats for my mom's Christmas present that I realized how familiar the sound of the foot raising and lowering and the pedal humming actually was to me. My mom must've sewed more than I realized, or I was right there when she was doing it, because that sound, raising, lowering, humming, is really comforting to me.

Until the sewing machine breaks.

Placemats aren't that hard. I bought the material. I washed it. I dried it. I ironed it. I traced templates. I cut them out. I sewed them together inside out. I turned them right-side out. I finished one of six. Then my needle broke for inexplicable reasons, and I am such a novice it took me a few minutes to figure out what had happened. So I changed the needle. Then I had to reload the bobbin, which took the concentration of an architect figuring out load-bearing walls. Then everything got jammed. Then I cried and stopped for the night.

I went back to it twice before I stuffed the whole machine in my car and went to a cookie exchange party at my friend Average Jane's. I asked Cagey what was wrong with it. She thought the bobbin. On the way home, I stopped at JoAnne and the sweet woman there who threaded my machine without even looking at the little hook that befuddles me every time told me it was jammed and needed to be sent away. And the guy who takes it just came the day before so I wouldn't get it back until after the new year. And, like a car, it would cost $100 just to open it up and look at it.

I handed over my basically brand-new but over-its-warranty sewing machine and shuffled back to the parking lot with the little angel in tow. We still had to go get Beloved's Christmas present and go to Costco and a million other holiday-related errands, and I felt so low. I was so close to being done. So I called my mom and admitted what happened and asked if I could use her sewing machine to finish the final edging. Of course she said I could. She even offered to finish her own Christmas present for me, but no, it's so important to me that I learn to do this, that I do this by myself.

I'm not used to having to stop a project for external reasons. It's maddening. When I get hung up writing, I know how to work the kinks out and keep going, but this, there's nothing I can do about this but wait. It's humbling.