Hemming

I just bought new pants. Unless I buy capri pants, hemming is required before I can actually wear new pants. This step makes me wonder if I'm too fat or too short. Probably both, I conclude. Nevertheless, unless I'm feeling flush and want to pay a seamstress, the desire (or need) to put them on requires I get out my thick plastic bag of miscellaneous sewing items, including all the extra buttons I dutifully save but never intend to replace. Black thread, needle and maybe a few pins are all I ever use.

I'm actually pretty good at a hem stitch. It's one of the few I know and the only one I employ. Once I'm settled in my comfy swivel chair, pants in hand and excess legging upturned, I give myself over to the zen-like methodical soothing of the slow stitching process. Measure out the thread. Ease the end through the needle eye. Knot the end. Penetrate the inseam and pull the needle through the edge of the factory-made hemline. Knot it up a bit more and proceed around the perimeter. As I slowly wind my way to the crease and then on to the next seam I marvel at my skill.

Each infrequent episode of hemming I ponder the origin of this skill. Was it my required sewing class in third-grade in Kingswood, New South Wales? Was it sixth grade Home Economics in Norman, Oklahoma? I know I didn't learn it from my mother or hers. Then I think about the only non-makeshift sewing box I ever owned. The memory takes me back to New South Wales. It was a required school item so mother bought me a standard issue floral, soft cloth covered thatched basket with one knob at the front that the looped latch slid over to secure all the precious pins, needles and multiple colored threads. I was so proud of it. At the time I'd never owned anything quite so pretty.

The sewing box was purchased shortly after our arrival in Australia and though mother had a pre-assigned teaching post in the suburbs we lived in a downtown Sydney hotel until an apartment was secured near her school. In the interim a daily commuter train took us near our new school. Within a week, I stepped off the train and neglected to pick up my sewing box on the way out. Off it went with the train. Never to be seen again. By me at least. I cried that day. And mother didn't buy me a new kit. I don't remember how I got by in sewing class. Those memories are tucked in the unaccessible creases of my brain. And maybe that's where my memory of learning to hem is. It's tangled up with a multitude of humiliating moments in a ball I don't have the patience or desire to untangle. As long as I can recall that hem stitch though, I've retained all I need from that knotty experience.