A Moment with my Mom. . .

Today I had a moment with my mom!  It’s hard for me to believe that next month, she will have been gone from us for 10 years!  In some ways, it seems like she was just here and in other ways, it was a lifetime ago. But today, I felt like she was right with me!

My mom was a sewer.  When we were little, she made all our clothes.  I didn’t love it at the time, since I wore the same dress three times – my own, then Patti’s when she grew out of it, then Robyn’s when I grew into it!  We have school pictures from one year we have on our matching dresses – they weren’t exactly the same, but it was all the same year!  She actually made Robyn’s wedding dress and our bridesmaid’s dresses. 

Later in her life, she started making baby quilts.  When Robyn was expecting Ken, Mom embroidered a quilt for his room, and I embroidered matching sheets and a pillow case.  We probably have those somewhere too! 

After she went to Heaven, I got all her sewing and embroidery stuff, including some quilts and quilt tops that she started and never finished.  I went through them the other day and found some, since I have a friend who is expecting a baby.  She’s not very far along, but I figured it would take me a while to finish it!  I found one I liked, got it out of the box and put it aside.  Today I took it out and got ready to work on it. 

Not long before she died, she had had some trouble with her eyes.  She actually had some procedure done to one eye and was going to have the other one done eventually. Little tiny directions had become hard for her to read.  I found the package of papers where she had enlarged the direction so she could see them more clearly.  Imagine my surprise, when inside, I found a set of needles that were still threaded with the embroidery floss.  It looked like she just put it away a day or two ago.  I wish she had!

I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately!  I used my sewing scissors on Monday and thought of her!  When I started school, she went to work.  She worked at a bra factory, sewing bras!  She has a special pair of scissors for fabric and sewing, and there was NO mercy for the poor kid who used them to cut paper!  She had to get a really good pair for the factory, and they engraved her name on them. Every time I use them, I see her name on them! 

Then, just this week, someone mentioned something that made me think of her.  She always thought of other people!  My friend Nanette, connected me with a new, old friend on Facebook.  This friend’s mom passed away YEARS ago.  My mom thought it would be a good idea for us to keep her kids, along with her sister’s kids, during their mom’s last days, so that they could be with her.  To us, it was a little thing – play with these little kids, but to those girls who were losing their mom, it was apparently a HUGE deal. My mom could always think of the right thing to do! 

I miss her, but I’m so thankful for the things she left me!  Half completed baby quilts, a great pair of sewing scissors, and a history of doing nice things for other people!