Older, and Trying to Be Wiser, and Better at Hemming Pants
December 10, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
I write fairly frequently here about Charlie growing up. Of course, he’s not the only one around here getting older: It’s my birthday today, and I’m 40.
Fout-ohmygod, as one my mom-blog-friend puts it. Like the narrator in T.S. Eliot’s poem, I grow old, I do grow old, and I actually do roll the bottoms of my trousers (ok, pants), because I’m too lazy to get out a needle and thread and hem them.
My mother did teach me to hem, years ago, and it really is years ago, due to this birthday thing. She taught us the basics; I think my first “creation” was a pocket made of fabric from the scraps of the Halloween costumes and jumpers and curtains and pillows she used to make. She put together a sewing box for my sister and me and I remember trailing behind the two of them as we wandered the rows in the fabric store. I loved seeing all the prints and patterns and colors and running my hands over the bolts of material, and always had to steal a long look at what I thought was an infinite array of buttons, snaps, rickrack, ribbon, and “notions.” When I was around 7 or 8 and my sister, sewing boxes in had, took the AC Transit bus to the big town a couple miles away (we were living in what was then a very brand new suburb) and took lessons at a Singer sewing store. I was mildly terrified of the needle on the machine going through my finger and didn’t advance beyond making an awkward wrap skirt from a Simplicity pattern.
The reason we were taking AC Transit to the sewing lesson was that my mother had gone back to work and it was just my sister and me for many hours in the long, hot summer days. The once a week sewing class broke up the time (most of which we spent, quite contentedly, reading books). A year later, we moved back to Oakland, where my father’s family is from (and where he, my sister, and I were born). The sewing machine, cover clipped securely on, sat in a corner of the downstairs room where my dad had his desk, or in an unfinished storage area.
My mother also used to needlepoint and my sister took this up, and still does (the green dragon under the words “Charlie’s room” still hangs on a wall by his’s window). I didn’t think about sewing till I was in graduate school and on my own, and, finding that I really didn’t want to have to roll up the bottoms of my pants, I asked my mom to teach me how to hem, again. I did a few pairs of pants with her, yes, “helping” to even things up—-ok, sometimes my mom, who is just a bit shorter than me, would just pin up the pants, pack them up in her luggage, hem them at home in California, and send them back to me. I probably got more care packages while I was in grad school and living in my own place than when I was in a dorm in college, and felt a bit ridiculous when finding myself really looking forward to see what kind of cookies she’d saran-wrapped in pairs.
So much for me “growing up” and being “independent.”
These days, she still sends the packages (my dad was quite thrilled to discover those flat-rate shipping postage boxes). Now there’s stuff for three and, in the latest sent two weeks ago, two pairs of pants, carefully hemmed, for Charlie, who seems to have reached a stage of his life when pants grow shorter overnight and when he and Jim can pretty much share t-shirts and socks. (And when the three of us were briefly confused the other day about whose black suede slip-on shoes were whose; Jim’s appeared only slightly bigger than Charlie’s.) I not only still don’t hem pants, but work is very busy, and taking care of Charlie, and talking and thinking through things with Jim, and everything …..
But I know I could hem pants if I had to. I still have a sewing box outfitted with needles of different sizes and different colors of thread and scissors and a thimble (though I did misplace the box for awhile in one of our moves). I don’t have to roll up the bottoms of every pair of pants, having finally found some that more or less are the right length, but I like knowing that I could if I had to. In the occasional times when I’ve sewed a button that fell off a sweater or one of Jim’s shirts, or tried to patch the lining of my coat pockets, I’ve found the activity of sewing—making the knot in the thread and moving the needle and thread in and out and in and out—focusing and, while not exactly relaxing, soothing in the repetition.
And then, my wardrobe has of late been a bit over-supplied in khaki and ripstop pants and jeans, some with elastic waists: The pants Charlie was wearing last year are pretty much the right length for me.
40 years old, and wearing hand-me-ups from a not-yet-adolescent boy.
Such are life’s lessons when you know you’re older, and you’re trying, very hard, to be just a bit wiser, especially when you know you get to spend the years to come (40, 41, and counting) with your two very, very best friends.
(But how long will Jim have a few inches on Charlie—there will be time, there will be time.)
Happy Birthday Kristina! The 40s are awesome
Happy B-day! Your as old as ya feel…blah blah blah
I jus turned 39 so I am going to enjoy a year of saying I’m still in my 30’s…..
I love that you can wear Charlies hand me downs…My hubby often confuses my and Casey’s clothes when putting away!
Happy birthday! Forty is the new thirty.
Happy Birthday Kristina, wishing the very best to you, Charlie and Jim!
Happy Birthday.
Remember,
40 is the new 30. There’s still some tread left. [smile].
Heh-heh. In a household with 3 girls/women fairly close in stature and size, poor Dad is completely befuddled when sorting the laundry, but Eleanor always makes the right call on whose garment belongs to who.
Many happy returns of the day!
I wouldn’t worry about hemming, just hack them off with pinking shears and tuck the ends in your socks.
Works for me!
Cheers
And many more!
You’re just a baby!! Frankly, I like the down-side of 40 better than the early years. Eventually, you get to that cranky old 50 when your REAL power comes into play.
Happy Birthday to a kind woman!
Hope you have a great day!
My early forties were great…now I am sliding towards fifty and I admit, I am not really thrilled
But it’s better than the alternative!
Congratulations, and welcome to the south side of 40! Jump right in, the water’s fine!
Happy birthday, Kristina! 40 here, too. Beat you by a few months. It’s a good decade so far, although I guess technically, it’s really the finish on the 30s.
Happy Birthday, you spring chicken!
Oh, and for hemming —a task I loathe more than anything —STITCH WITCHERY; it’s an iron-on tape that holds as well as actual stitching. I have tons of it and loooove it. (My hands cramp up when I try to hand sew.) Seriously, it will change your life!
Happy Birthday!!!
stitch witchery—-hmmm—–that name has me to thinking of this Stitch!
thanks for all the kind wishes and onward knowing I’m in more than excellent company!
Welcome to the 40s and hope your birthday is a festive one. I am closing in on 50 and quite strange to say that.
Happy birthday, Kristina, and many happy returns!
Happy 40th, many more!
When I turned 40, we were a little more than two years in the wake of Jeremy’s autism diagnosis, and about a year and a half following my own AS diagnosis.
It was a time of intensity and expansion.
Unlike the stereotypical autism-parent narrative that the mainstream autism organizations and media like to promote, Jeremy’s diagnosis was not the worst day of our lives. We discovered that we’d thought things would be much worse than they are. We’d thought autism was degenerative, that institutionalization was an inevitability, that severe cognitive impairment was an inevitability, and on and on. We discovered that autism is not degenerative, that outcomes can be greatly improved with the right supports and interventions, that autistic behaviors and ways of interacting with the world were not inscrutable or impenetrable or nonfunctional — but rather made a great deal of sense when viewed in context.
We were in the midst of a preschool program for Jeremy that touted itself as ABA-based — but was open-minded enough to work with us on priorities we set: skill-building and leveraging strengths, rather than normalization or “indistinguishability”.
I was trying to make sense of my life through the new lens that came with my own diagnosis.
We met and befriended more and more autistic adults as our journey progressed. This helped greatly, in envisioning Jeremy’s future, and in beginning to grapple with the issues that they faced and that Jeremy and we, too, would face in the future.
In fact I would count connecting with — listening to — autistic adults, respecting them as human equals, as one of the two most important pieces of advice to families new to an autism diagnosis.
The other is teaching preliteracy skills and establishing a reliable, trusted, and respected means of expressive communication. If your child is not developing expressive speech, that is Job 1. It will help him or her steer clear of maladaptive behavior as the only means of mitigating sources of distress. It will make him or her less vulnerable. It will open the door to further education.
But I digress. Happy 40th, Kristina!
Now 50 — that’s a source of cognitive dissonance for me. I don’t feel 52. (Well, except in an adult beginner’s class at Jeremy’s taekwondo dojang, when trying to put too much power into my kicks with not enough prior warmup netted me a nasty long bout with bursitis in my knee…)
Johannes Brahms, who was born on the same day as me, was 52 when he wrote his 4th symphony. I guess I feel more like the 52 of the scherzo of the 4th, than that of the first movement with its sense of wistfulness or that of the passacaglia with its sense of inevitability…