Deb Bartle

Crafting: a life

Before I was born, my mother and grandmother created a christening outfit for me. Mom cut and sewed and stitched all summer long when she wasn't busy working as an au pair in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Grandma tatted lace in a tiny village in rural New York. With the work of their hands, together in creation but apart in location, they bound their love into fabric and turned it into art for a child they'd never seen and couldn't keep. The adoption agency wouldn't let them give it to me. It was the 60s, and anything gifted from the birth mother might "weaken" the bond of the child with its new parents. As if she hadn't already given them the greatest gift imaginable. She had four days before they took me away and she returned to school.