Sewing myself

I hated needlework in school. Especially because Sister Borgia (a highly appropriate name) was our needlework teacher. She was about 4 feet tall and made up with her sour attitude what she lacked in height. She also fervently believed like all the nuns that girls--young women--should know how to sew. What do these eternal virgins, these brides of Christ know about preparing young women for life in the world? Still, you had to get a passing grade in needlework.
So I learned to hem and do the running stitch and cross stitch...badly. I could never do it right. I was too impatient, too uninterested. I passed. Barely. And when school was over, I threw away the needles and the threads and never sewed again.

But sometimes these days I wish I could thread a needle with a flesh colored twine and sew myself back together. Sew together those who I have not seen or communicated with for a while, close to my side. They are not me, but somehow their presence makes me complete.

Within me I want to sew on my illusions, my convictions, my joys. Tightly so they never go away from me. I want to stitch on to myself my sanity, my equilibrium, a feeling of belonging, my sense of home. A home that stays with me even though I no longer live there.

I want to sew myself together, take all my separate pieces...all the parts of me, and bring them together into a patchwork quilt of myself. I want to gather everything and everyone important to me and attach them to me with thread.

I am not gluing myself together. That makes everything stiff, inflexible, and tacky. Threads, however, can be cut if needed, they can fray...and they can even be reinforced.

I dream some nights of sewing myself together and making everything all right.