Not the Fabric Scissors

“Not my fabric scissors.”

Shlink

“I’m not kidding.”

Shl—

I put them down, but not before rolling my eyes. How did she know I’d grabbed those exact scissors? And who cares if I used fabric scissors to cut paper? They are scissors. There is no difference between scissors. They’re scissors.

I told her as much, probably with a tad too much attitude in my voice. She peeked into the room. Her energy commanded my attention so I turned.

“Because I said so.”

Cue eye roll. The gesture is universally known to be an invisible Stop sign, but she strode into the room, reached into the drawer to my left, and drew out the scissors I’d been looking for. Honestly, I had been looking for the purple-handled ones, but who bypasses a pair of scissors on their way to retrieve scissors?

“I am happy to let you use my things, but you will treat them with respect. Do you hear me?”

End scene.

My daughter is a mere four years old, but as it turns out, that’s how long it takes for a woman to morph into her mother after procreating. Not only do I have a favorite burner on the stove and rub lotion into my arms just so, but I have a craft room. Granted, the room also houses the washer and dryer, cleaning supplies, and other home-making flotsam and jetsam that don’t exactly go anywhere else. But first and foremost, it’s my craft room. Mine.

Except it's not mine. Because my space has been taken over by a smaller, just-as-freckled yet not-as-curly-haired version of me. She uses my markers but forgets to push the cap back on all the way. She doesn’t put the Washi tape back in its drawer. She fiddles with my sewing machine so I can never simply sit down and start using it; I have to make sure she hasn’t twisted a pipe cleaner around the bobbin or unplugged the pedal.

I saw the room becoming ours during the slow days of quarantine when she would otherwise have been at preschool, crafting with kid-safe scissors, purple glue sticks, and cotton balls (not to mention the patient teachers). I would sneak downstairs to escape the cacophony of a crying baby, The Wiggles show, and the general buzzing of a family of four stuck together with no safe alternative. I’d sit with my chosen craft, breathing deeply as my shoulders loosened and my nerves calmed. Yet it never took long before I’d feel eyes on me. I’d sing that line from the Geico commercial, ”I always feel like somebody’s watching me, and I have no privacy.” Her tiny voice would reach out to me from the shadow at the bottom of the stairs.

“Mommy, can I watch you snitch?” Snitch being her word for “stitch”. (My husband and I long ago promised to never correct her adorable mispronunciations. We’re still salty at whoever corrected “zeebees” to “zebras”.)

Not only did I let her watch me cross-stitch, but I pulled up a stool and asked her to help me. I’d let her pull the slim needle through the Aida fabric. She saw her tiny blue Xs turn into multi-colored snowflakes on what would become her Christmas stocking.

It didn’t take long before she wanted to wind bobbins, sort beads, and iron completed projects (with an unplugged iron; I wasn’t interested in visiting the ER during a global health crisis). When I crafted, she crafted. It became our special time. It’s where we escaped the heat of summer and where we spent dark winter afternoons. Bedtime was ignored in the windowless basement room. Crafting didn’t go to bed early, and neither did we. But life called us back upstairs more often than not before we were done. We’d set our work down and trudge upstairs, conspiring how we could sneak away later in the day.

She overheard me say to my husband yesterday, “I have a project to finish for Shannon. Can I snitch when we’re done with the baby’s bath?” She perked up.

“Mommy, can I cut shapes from the pretty paper?”

“Of course, baby.”

I smiled as I watched her skip to the basement door.

"Not my fabric scissors,” I reminded her.

She whipped her head around and served me a look that wasn’t quite an eye-roll but still conveyed a high level of incredulousness.

“Never, Mommy.”