project: memories

Image caption: Embroidered pieces. Left: animal skull with purple flowers growing around it and through the eye socket on unstretched canvas. Top middle: a portrait of myself and my late Rara, holding hands, on aida cloth. Bottom middle: the garden embroidered on unstretched canvas in law class. Right: a body and bone study on navy blue satin, silver scissors propped against it.

When I first began to talk, I called my grandma ‘Rara.’ I had not yet mastered complex words with more syllables than I had years. I was the firstborn, and so I decided the names for all my grandparents: Nana, Papa, Grandpa, and of course, Rara. Some few years later, when I had learned words and numbers in two languages, I still sometimes called her Rara. Not always, but in those special moments that were just for us two, I called her Rara.

When I was five, she taught me to embroider. She took me to a craft store, where she found threads and tapestry needles, and I found a light pink box to put everything in. She chose a tapestry needle because it would be easier for my clumsy child’s fingers to learn to thread. I still have that needle.

I learned with pink thread on a plastic canvas. We sat on the couch in the basement, warmed by the fire my grandpa had built. She tied the ends of the thread together so the needle would not fall, and with her guidance, I stitched a flower. I was clunky and it was rough, but it was mine. She was so, so proud. I was proud too.

We kept the box at my grandparents’ house. It was something special, just for us, together. We stitched when I slept over, always before we did our nails, so as not to ruin the thread or polish. I stitched, lying on the patterned blue carpet in her den while she made lunch and showed her my work after we ate. I made a dolphin, a candle, some colourful lines. She was proud each and every time. This was happiness. This was joy.

When I was nine, she got sick. She wore a wig to cover her scalp-short hair and she had to take breaks when we walked. She got thin and tired. She got sad.

When I was ten, I took the box home. She was too tired to teach me, her hands shook too much to try.

I began our last project.

I stitched us, holding hands. On the white fabric, I wear a pink shirt and purple skirt; she wears blue pants and a green shirt with a pink collar. My single-lined, back-stitched left arm reaches so our hands can hold. My yellow-blonde hair is shoulder-length and messy, hers brown and short, more orderly on account of my learning how to stitch hair. We have no noses or eyebrows, but we are smiling. On this piece of fabric, now taped to my dresser, we are smiling. We are happy.

When I was eleven, she passed away. The day before, I had picked dandelions and given them to her for Mother's Day. The nurses put them in a vase. I don’t think she ever knew.

That was the day I stitched a heart to that picture and taped it to my dresser. It has been there ever since.

My Rara never got to see me in a school play, never got to see me graduate, or see me be accepted to a university. But she did give me my greatest joy: creating. She gave me my first needle and thread, and she gave me this happiness.

I stopped for almost five years. I couldn’t pick up a needle without thinking of the hands that taught me. I couldn’t look at the canvas or fabric I had learned on without seeing her face. I put the box with that pink flower on that plastic canvas under my bed. I put it high on a shelf at the back of my closet. I tried to shove it under dusty boxes in my mind. I tried my very best to forget. It hurt too much to even think about her. How could I ever embroider again, when she was gone? So I put the box and all its memories away.

I pulled it out at sixteen. I still couldn’t use the tapestry needle. I could barely look at the plastic canvas. I went back to the craft store and got new needles, new thread. I got new fabric and a bamboo hoop. I cut a square of navy blue satin and stretched it into the hoop. I didn’t know where to start. I was still sad and still scared. The fabric sat in the hoop for a day, a week, two.

I embroidered strawberries. I was out of practice, but I had made something, and that was enough. I could pretend I heard her say she was proud of me one more time.

I kept going. I embroidered on pants and shirts. I made gifts: pillows, patches, bags, and books. My favourite are the pillows. I use unstretched canvas to hold my design, on the back, patterned satin or cotton. I embroidered flowers, arranged in a ‘C’ for my little brother’s tenth birthday. I embroidered the ASL hand signs for ‘Maya,’ my best friend, and put dried lavender in with the stuffing. She took it across the country to university with her.

I make patches. Flowers, bones, promises, poetry. I make them while I listen to music and audiobooks, stitching images on canvas. I unwind an arm’s length from the bobbin and cut the string to thread through the eye of the needle, then tie a knot at the end of the string. Push the needle through the fabric, pull the thread tight, push and pull, push and pull. When the string is short and through, I tie the thread into a knot and cut the excess off. I do this with all my colours, all the shades and tints and tones and hues. When the piece is done, I carefully fold each edge, fold each corner in, and stitch a border so the canvas doesn’t fray. I give them away as gifts, or sew them on jackets, or keep them in a box on my desk.

I make books with foot-long stretches of canvas as the covers. Branches with budding flowers, studies of architecture in thin black thread. Underwater landscapes filled with multicoloured fish and a turtle, an octopus and jellyfish. Galaxies, stars, planets. I cut sheets of paper to size and press them, folded, under thick books until they lie flat. I stitch the folded spines together, then stitch them to the cover.

I doodle during class. My hands need to be busy for me to learn, so I doodle with string. They are mostly abstract nonsense, tiny stitches turned to spirals and organic shapes. In law class, I made gardens. I had red flowers and blue flowers, yellow flowers and purple flowers. I had pink flowers. There are always pink flowers.

Through it all, I remember my Rara. Her patient hands, her gentle joy. I remember my first pink flower.