Sew Sweet

The sewing machine is whirring, whirring... and I am flashing back to my own teenage hours spent snip-snip-snipping and pinning and creating and trying on and unpicking and sewing and pinning and sewing and finally wearing.

It's twenty-odd years hence, and Woozie is dressed in her new fave black-bleached jeans, a pink top and my black felt-heeled dancing shoes, her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, a silver ring floating on a chain around her neck. She's stretching out on the lounge floor, snip-snip-snipping at pairs of jeans she's suddenly grown out of, strewing the carpet with snipped-off threads, snipped-off fabric, pins, scissors... measuring, sewing, squinting at the thread which is transforming yet another pair of jeans into a couture bag. Her lilting alto accompanies the whirring, whirring of the machine. She triumphantly produces her latest piece, checking the seams are straight and adjusting pins and threads, snipping more fabric and strewing more threads.

Her littlest brother runs past, gazing adoringly at Woozie's latest creation and begs her to make him a bag. At which she immediately stops her own sewing and takes him by the hand towards last year's mending pile, hacks off a trouser leg of a pair of size-too-small jeans... and in half a minute M6 is stuffing his own precious treasures into his very own bag.
And I am thankful again for a soulmate, a sister, a singer, a song.