Love In Stitches

I was only 19 years old when I married my first husband, an airman in the United States Air Force, in the hopes that we would, as the recruiting commercials promised, "see the world". Just one year after our wedding, we were sent to Clark Air Base in the Philippines for a three year assignment. But was not a pleasant tour. My husband was attached to a high deployment squadron, which meant that he was deployed elsewhere frequently, and I was left alone for months at a time in a place that I, a naive kid who had never been alone, found strange and dangerous and very lonely. So I was elated when I became pregnant, and I looked forward to the birth of my baby with excitement. But in my 26th week, I began hemorrhaging, and my baby did not survive; I was devastated.

Having sustained moderate to severe blood loss, my doctor put me on bed rest. Unfortunately, that didn't mean my husband got to take off work, so I was left alone most of the time. We had no video players back then, and the only stations on TV were Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) and two Filipino channels. Since I spoke no Tagalog, I couldn't even understand the bad soap operas and talk shows on the local channels, so I was left with only AFRTS. And, since the summer Olympics were in full force, the only show on AFRTS was the summer Olympics. For several weeks, there was nothing but four walls, reading books I'd already read, and the constant drone of inane sportscasters reporting about sports I cared absolutely nothing about. I was, quite literally, bored to tears. So, after coming home to find me sobbing in bed several days in a row, my husband went to the base exchange. He returned with two big paper grocery bags full of embroidery thread, beads, fabric and patterns. "My mom likes doing this counted cross stitch stuff and I thought it would give you something to do," he announced hopefully as he placed the bags in front of me. I dumped the contents in front of me, taking in the myriad colors and soft fibers that were piled on the bed. I was immediately hooked. The challenge of taking a blank piece of fabric and creating a design with nothing more than a graph to tell me where to place my stitches presented a challenge to me. I had only ever done stamped embroidery before, and I'd found that tedious. I settled on a pattern for a small stitched and beaded Christmas ornament and got started. And I was hooked. I stitched like a mad woman, oblivious to the droning of the sportscasters and the Filipino soap operas and the four walls, until I had stitched and finished a dozen Christmas ornaments. After I healed, I took my stitching with me everywhere...to the park, to doctors appointments, to friends' houses. A year after I lost my first baby, I became pregnant again. Once again on bed rest, I stitched my way through the months of my pregnancy. I stitched a fluffy kitten for my baby's room, a set of towels as a gift, more Christmas ornaments to send back home to family and friends. And after my baby was born, I stitched after she was in bed.

As time passed, my projects became more and more detailed. I progressed from Christmas ornaments and hand towels to framed birth announcements and wedding pieces whose stitches were far more intricate and varied. My stitching evolved from a simple way to pass the time to an actual art form.

About fifteen years later, I found a pattern for a Christmas stocking that was the most intricate I had ever seen. The pattern was called Daddys Workshop, and it was absolutely perfect for my father, a lifelong woodworker. The pattern took me 2 years to complete. I finished it in the spring of 2002, and couldn't wait to give it to my father for that Christmas. But when my boys and I visited the State Fair that fall, Jordan, my youngest, who often sat next to me while I stitched, had an idea. Looking at the craft and sewing exhibits, he said, "Mom, that stocking you made for Grampa is WAY better than any of these things. You should enter it!" I laughed it off. I'd never entered anything in a competition before. And I forgot about it.

In June of 2003, my Jordan was killed in a freak accident at a friend's house. He was six weeks shy of his 11th birthday. 

Not long after I lost Jordan, I saw advertising for fair entries, and I remembered that Jordan had wanted me to enter my dad's stocking in the state fair. So I called my dad and asked to borrow the stocking back, and I took it to the exhibit entry for the state fair, dedicating my entry to the memory of my beloved son Jordan.

I won. Jordan was right.

I have gone on to stitch 2 more stockings in the pattern series, one for my mom and one my oldest son. I have now been stitching for 31 years, and it still brings me as much joy and peace as the first projects I did while healing from the pain and heartbreak of losing my first baby. My best pieces all reside in the homes of my loved ones, with the exception of my mom's stocking, which was returned to me by my father after mom crossed over last summer. I will hang it every Christmas and remember the joy on her face when I gave it to her. I hope Jordan sees it too.