And Sew It Goes
By Sarah Smallwood

It isn’t because we were poor. Or rather, I should say, it isn’t just because we were poor. Poverty played a large part, as it will with any large family’s upbringing, but also the pervading mindset that necessity has nothing to do with money—and therefore everything to do with not spending it.

And it is why, twenty years later, I sit contemplating my old black backpack, seam-ripper at the ready.

I have had this backpack for literally longer than I can remember; I know it accompanied me in my tirades against Heart of Darkness as maritime gay porn in AP English, but I have a rusty memory of it being given to me sometime before high school. I don’t have any particular affection for it; it serves its purpose, intrepidly sporting the same goth patches and protest buttons it has since my campus days (items that I can’t be bothered to remove). Still, you might think it was relatively new if not for the glaring discrepancy in the straps: years of wearing it the "cool" one-shoulder way have resulted in one seldom-used, puffy-with-life shoulder strap; and one flat, flaccid flap of fabric that, while awesomely alliterative, needs some serious sartorial collagen. Despite failing one of the main tenants of its existence—to transport heavy things comfortably—I cannot throw it out.

Because I will make my fingers bleed refashioning an item if it means I do not have to buy a new one.

If there can be blame, it rests on my mother and grandmother, an indefatigable couture team churning out outfits at least as fast as offspring. These resourceful women kept all six of us children dressed in whatever embarrassing fetish we had latched onto that week; a dolphin-patterned skirt or heart-pocketed skorts can be seen in many a picnic photo. The most astounding product, the knitted He-Man sweater for my little brother, was met with a wry Christmas-morning smile from my grandmother, a smile that started four weeks earlier with a simple, "I bet I could knit a sword."

"I bet." It wasn’t about the money, the trademark, the official t-shirt that wouldn't have made it to the memory box. There, sitting by my grandmother’s sewing machine every afternoon, hand-hemming doll clothes while she tacked lace on a wedding dress, was the "I bet."

After six children of her own, Grandma didn’t need to bet a damn thing.

Becoming an ace sewer by the time I was twelve seemed hardwired into my DNA. I started altering my own clothing in my teens, when I was the fourth stop for the hand-me-downs that started at my mother. A skill true to its roots, necessity and sheer panic—the desire to be seen in public looking only halfway as dumpy as a Polish maiden aunt. Poverty, that scary place where gathering and shirring sleeves is the space between Oreos and Hydrox—and later, between groceries and cable. Even in later, flush times, when a trip to buy clothing (at a mall!) is a possibility, I rarely go from rack to body without a quick trip to the machine; a jacket cut for the shoulders of John Travolta and the waist of Katharine Hepburn is not readily found in most clothing stores.

Unpacking the summer clothes has always meant an untidy pile slumped over the machine to be whittled at my leisure, gift cards to JoAnn Fabrics a staple gift item. At family reunions, popped buttons are back in place in under thirty seconds. So naturally, after six months of the dental floss-like "strap" machete-ing its way into my newly-protrudent collarbone I decided, rather than shop for a new bag, I would simply switch the two straps, thereby extending the life of the bag for ten more years. I don’t really mind the odd non-sterile needle jab to the index finger, since having a thing that exactly suits my needs—and for free!—gives me such a sick thrill.

I could buy a new backpack. I am an adult, I drive, I pay rent, and I could hack the forty bucks for an Adidas with comfort straps. But that’s not where I come from. I am still the kid who spent fourth grade in a succession of ruffly dresses in assorted dinosaur fabrics. Who sat too short for the foot pedal, who was deathly afraid of the zipper foot, who watched her Grama knock off a fresh pocketed jumpsuit every Sunday. Because there is something there, an ethos, something closer to heritage than paczki and birthing hips.

Something that makes me examine a seam like silt in a gold-miner’s pan, fingering the fabric and think, “I can work with that.”

——

Sarah Smallwood has been published by McSweeney's, loves her dog and will never let you forget that she ran a marathon. She can be reached through her long-documented salute to ennui, The Other Shoe. She lives in Michigan.

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