Making My Parents Happy

Today’s title probably strikes fear in your heart.  Certainly it strikes fear in every child on report card day.  However, this isn’t about school, this stems from yesterday’s blog when we all tried so hard to please Mom with our selection of Christmas trees.

            You see I was both blessed and cursed by having 2 parents who were perfectionists.  That is a very difficult pinnacle to climb, especially when you don’t even realize you are making the climb.  What do I mean?  I mean that all through my childhood and young adulthood I didn’t even realize that I was trying to please my parents.  But always, in my inner head, I knew that there were goals I had to achieve because my parents expected it.  Graduate from high school, go on to university, go to Europe.  Get confirmed by a Danish priest (for heavens’ sake, I was 18!).

            Yet there were some things I rebelled against because I knew there was no possibility of reaching Mount Olympus.  What might that be?  Well, let’s just say that the sewing machine has always been my enemy.  My mother was a seamstress genius.  She could make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (literally).  I was doomed right from Grade 7 when we had mandatory Home Ec (for 2 years).  We had a most peculiar cycle of responsibility.  There were only 8 sewing machines so you moved down the row of machines until you finally got lucky and went into the kitchen.  We had 2 kitchens with 4 girls in each kitchen.  I was lucky enough to have my name begin with A and get started in the kitchens so I did not have to sit at the dreaded sewing machine for 4 weeks.

            Our task, if we chose to accept it (and who had a choice?) was to make a gingham apron with one pocket.  It took me 10 months to make and when I was done my mother thought it was a rag.  I wilted.  Ever after I stubbornly refused to enjoy sewing.  Grade 8 was a nightmare.  We had to make a blouse.  Not only did my mother refuse to buy the pattern we were supposed to use (it was ugly in her mind) but I had to use the fabric she had left over from a cocktail dress she had made for herself.  Navy blue.  Can you imagine a 13 year old girl in navy blue in 1966?  Everything cool was either paisley or orange.  In the end, in order to pass, my mother sewed the blouse for me.  For a little zip she sewed little white lace flowers up the front.  Miss McKecknie looked dubiously at the blouse and then at me.  I widened my big blues and stared straight back.  I passed.

            I never willingly went back to the sewing machine after Grade 8.  Until we started quilting . . . but that’s another story!