A GIFT FROM THE HEART

 WHEN GIVING MEANS THE MOST

Our most recent trip to Italy was the granting of a birthday boy's wish. It was planned well in advance during a difficult time of uncertainty. Who plans on a pandemic or organizing a trip during one? It took every lucky penny and luck itself to pull it off. Once the wheels had been set in motion there was no turning back. For a year it was a coin flip of would we go or wouldn't we. I felt if we could pull it off the trip was going to be gift enough but I couldn't let the day of his birthday arrive without something for him to open. I struggled, until I came up with the one thing I had that I could give him: time. 

Earlier in the year when we both were back in New York during a temporary break in the pandemic's timeline of being up and then down he had gone to his closet to see if he could find some clothes he wanted to take back to Madison. There was one piece he had been searching for. He was hoping it was New York. Our closet in New York is a wall long and lit so if it was there it couldn't hide from view. It was a grey wool knit jacket he was hoping to find. Sometimes an article of clothing can be more than just cloth and needlework. This jacket had that sentiment for him. Tucked between a black blazer and a navy blue car coat was the jacket. It was there on a white wooden hanger it's lapels still properly folded. The relief of finding something you haven't seen for a while or thought you might have lost is so satisfying. A bit of relief heaved from his chest and then a sad droop caught the outside corners of his eyes and mouth. As the light from the closet caught the back of the wool jacket it seared through a huge hole like a wartime searchlight. Moths had attacked the jacket and eaten away a piece just below the edge of the lapel.  He went from elated to devastated to resigned. Before he left to go back to Madison he told me I should just throw the jacket away.

I didn't. I kept it because I had an idea. I signed up for an online darning class; part of week long event sponsored by New York City and the New York sanitation department along with several vintage clothing shops promoting the reuse and rehabilitation of old or discarded clothing. I decided this would be my gift of time. I wasn't sure how this was going to turn out but I was willing to try and expose myself to what I knew was going to be imperfection.

We were still dealing with the remnants of Covid. The class would be a remote zoom experience. After signing up I received an email with information about what I would need to participate in the class. My ADHD kicked in, I merely skimmed the instructions only focusing on the pictorial part of the email. I did get all of the right equipment but I missed the parts about the size of a hole I should attempt for a first try at darning. The hole on the back of Rick's jacket was bigger than a baseball and one only a seasoned darner should try to fix. 

The darning lesson was to run about any hour. We were told to bring a round ball or piece of fruit to secure the area around the hole we were going to darn. Looking at my hole I chose the largest navel orange I could find. I automatically knew I was in trouble. Fortunately I decided to turn my video off so no one could see what I was doing. I knew I was way too deep once I saw several others with socks or sweaters with holes the size of pennies and dimes. The instructor began with a little overview of the importance of rehabilitating worn clothing. Then she began showing us what to do by example.

The instructions for darning are really pretty simple. You start by creating a checkerboard pattern of stiches going in one direction about a half inch beyond the hole you are trying to repair. Once you've created your pattern you begin weaving your yarn through the checkerboard in the perpendicular direction from your first set of stiches. Simple. Right?

Let's start from the beginning: selecting the right weight of yarn for the hole you're trying to fix. I thought the recommendation for what I wanted to do was a lightweight yarn. I also wanted to select a color that I thought would be a nice complement to Rick's grey wool blazer. I picked a medium weight steely blue yarn. The wrong selection on both counts: too thin and too hard to see where my stitches were against the grey of the jacket.

As the group leader went on with her instructions I, and several others were still trying to thread our needles. Shoving a fuzzy yarn through the eye of a needle, even a darning needle, is no easy task. There should have been a course in just how to squeeze yarn through a needle without using a series of selected curse words. By the time I threaded my first needle the instructor was way ahead of me showing off her immaculate checkerboard of white yarn against a red sock.

With no contrast between field and foreground color my checkerboard was only going to be imagined and would have to rely on luck to approximate any sort of a checkerboard pattern.

As my random pattern finally closed in on the hole it became very apparent that the strands of yarn traversing the hole were going to be far to far apart for me to assimilate any approximation of a tight weave over such a large area. I was f*!ck'd right from the start.

Unwilling to share my work with the group I realized I was going to be on my own for the rest of my darning journey. After the hour-long session with the darning class I knew it was going to be me and my needles and thread all alone. I would have to develop a new tactic for continuing.

For better visibility of my checkerboard stitch work I changed to a white yarn and went over the steely blue I had already sewn. I then doubled the grey/blue thread from one strand to two. This ended up doubling my needle threading time trying to push two widths of thread through the needles eye where one was difficult enough. The swear count went way up. 

With by now hours and hours of over and under and back again with more steely blue yarn to get the color of my patch back to a better deeper hue I finally got to a point where the patch seemed strong enough and full enough to pull it away from my navel orange. Once the orange had been removed my patching retained its phantom bulge as if I had given it birth. The belly of my patch remained rounded and full rather than flat.

As a final step I took a damp cloth, laying it over my handy work and tried to lightly iron out the bulge back into a smoother flatter surface. Did anyone know that wool burns? I now had added a slight brownish/greenish ting to my amebic patch.

Imperfection achieved.

Even with all its flaws it still felt right. I bundled it up in my suitcase in some tissue paper and twine. I hide it there until the night of Rick's birthday party in Tuscany. 

Rick had requested that none of us should give him any gifts. Everyone's presence in Italy was all he wanted, but I knew I wanted to do something; something small but meaningful. The patch on the back of this jacket that he had loved became a gift and a metaphor for our relationship.  Our life hadn't always been easy but it's been filled with the most beautiful highs and some very deep lows both of which we've survived. We've worked hard at mending our relationship during troubled times just like I mended this jacket. The mends are not perfect but the results are beautiful to me in their imperfections. It's not traditionally pretty but it's us. I did it with love. I hope he'll wear it and be proud of it not being perfect. I also know he already has plans for improving it.