Create Your Happiness

Create Your Happiness. Three simple words, a mantra to live by. But why is it that maintaining something so basic as happiness can be so complicated?

Sometimes at night, I lay awake and think about my mom. No one can argue that it has been a long year. For all of us. Happiness at times has seemed more than elusive, it's been downright absent. For me personally, on top of everything else going on in the world, my mom’s health has been failing. Strokes and macular degeneration have taken her eyesight and pieces of her personality along with it. She’s turned into a stubborn child, one who believes she is always right but is also so fearful of the world around her and its rapid changes. Our relationship has become strained. It’s the hardest part of watching my mother age. How do I hold onto the memories of who she once was when the person she has become is so very different.

After one particularly hard week with my mother, I took my daughter to the craft store thinking we could do a fun project together; create some good memories. My daughter instantly gravitated towards the dinosaur puppets as I tried to entice her into a coloring kit or a pom-pom bracelet maker. I quickly gave in and she happily made jokes through the store with a rubber dinosaur on her hand. I still wanted to get a project for us to work on. As I scanned the aisle, something caught my eye: a pair of orange-handled Fiskars scissors. The moment I saw them a vision of my mom’s sewing table popped into my head. Those were her special scissors, the holy ones she only allowed to be touched by fabric and thread. They lived in her sewing kit. I would secretly sneak them when I couldn't find any other scissors in the house. Once, around age five, I used those scissors to cut her fine lace tablecloth. I don’t remember if I ever told her. But I do remember being alone at the dining room table with that powerful pair of orange-handled scissors. I remember how terribly wicked I felt, deliberately snipping a length of that delicate lace.

The memory made me grin. What’s the saying, “you mustn't be too good in life…”

Inspired, I plucked the Fiskars from the shelf. I was going to have my own pair, just like the ones from my childhood. Those scissors must have traveled 30 years through our family. I wondered if my mom still had them even? I must have been about eight when my mom taught me to sew. How to cut fabric, thread the machine, rip out a mistake. I felt simultaneously so very frustrated and so very proud of my first project (a cloth doll with a little blue dress). It’s basically how I have felt with every subsequent sewing project. It’s funny how we can make these beautiful pieces, and still be hung up on all the tiny mistakes sewn into them.

Sewing with my mom was certainly a positive memory of her. A tender one amongst many thorny others. Even when my mom was younger -before her children, mortgages, a divorce, and strokes- she struggled to find internal happiness. It didn’t come easy to her; too often anxiety and jealousy overwhelmed her. I knew she’d had a hard childhood and I appreciated that she tried so hard to hold our family together, even if she held on too tight. I’d like to think that those moment’s teaching me to sew were her happy ones too.

On the drive home from the craft store I called my mom. She answered an unsure, “Hello?” It's a question poised, because she cannot see who is calling with her low vision. Also, she refuses to switch to a smartphone. I picture her flipping open her ancient cell phone, suspicious a telemarketer is on the other end.

“It's me,” I know she will recognize my voice, “hey, random question, do you still have that pair of orange sewing scissors?”

There’s silence for a moment, “I don’t think so,” she says, “I gave all my sewing stuff to your sister a while ago.”

I don’t know why this disappoints me -the fact that my mom doesn’t have a pair of 30 year old scissors- but it does.

“I bought myself a pair today. Fiskars. Just like yours,” I say.

“That’s nice,” she responds, with no inkling to the weight and symbolism it has for me. I can tell by the distance in her voice she’s in one of her moods today, she sounds terse and edgy.

We end the conversation as we always do, with an automatic “I love you.”

When I get home, I tell my daughter to pick out some stuffed animals; that we are going to make them new clothes with our new scissors. I pull out my sewing machine. We sit at the table, my daughter in my lap, and we (mostly I) start cutting fabric and making little clothes. I tuck the raw edges in, hiding the unsightly threads from view, protecting the vulnerable edges, and stitch a new hem. I like watching the ragged edge become clean and pretty.

I watch my daughter excitedly push her stuffed animal into the dress we just made. I kiss her head and hope that someday, she will remember my scissors too. I love making things. The challenges in sewing projects are, for the most part, solvable and satisfying. When I see my daughter wearing something I made (like the little red riding hood cloak that she loves) I feel so connected to her and to her childhood in that moment. It is happiness. I will save that little cloak for her child someday. I can only hope these moments will be the ones she remembers when I am old and losing my own marbles.

Later, we drive to my mom’s house to take a photo. I feel a little awkward since we had been arguing so much the last week. But it is sunny and she is in a good mood and happy to see us. I show her the scissors I bought.

“Oh wait,” she says, “I found these…”

She fumbles around her living room and comes back with a pair of orange-handled scissors, the orange-handled scissors of my childhood, the Fiskars. I feel a sense of glee to see them. They are shiny and worn and look just as I remember them. “Where were they?” I ask.

“In my living room,” she chuckles, “I’ve been using them all this time,”

I put them next to mine. My mom’s pair looks slightly different than the modern ones; hers are worn, less comfortable, with little nicks and marks from the years in them. I can’t help but see the two of us in the scissors. We take a photo.

“Do you want them?” she asks.

Part of me wants to say, “yes,” they are a piece of my childhood, my memory and my mother.

“No,” I say, “I have my own pair now.”

On the drive home I think about how my mom will never read this story. How she’ll never see one of my stories with her worn out eyes again. The thought makes my own eyes go blurry. But then I think, maybe I will read this one out loud to her sometime. After all, it is my love note to her...and a pair of orange-handled scissors.