Pinking

I get my mother’s pair of pinking shears. They’re chrome plated. Weighty. Old. There’s no date on them, just a patent number stamped into the side. The original manual is still there, a little accordion of waxy paper tucked in the bottom of the cardboard box. There is no date printed there either, but the corners have gone brown with age. It suggests things to make: napkins, dish towels, dust cloths. “To supplement your supply of emergency handkerchiefs,” it says, “pink soft linens in squares.” Now, I don’t have a supply of handkerchiefs, emergency or otherwise. I have no soft linens to pink—though I am delighted by pink as a verb. The shears themselves look like crafting scissors ate a sawfish. Like the silver skull of an animal that doesn’t exist. Mouth lined with zigzag teeth, ready to chew through any fabric I could feed it. We are both hungry for a new project.

I make things, when I can. I make time for my creativity, I make space on my desk to line up little bottles of nail polish so they make a rainbow, I make an effort to call my grandmother when it snows. I make mistakes and art and pitchers of sweet tea. I made one of the mugs in the cabinet for a high school ceramics class. I made a pink hat and matching socks. I made my dangly wire earrings with superglue and needle nose pliers. I learned lost wax casting so I could pry the panic button from the key fob of my dad’s truck and solder it to a silver ring. I’ve been making a blanket for over a year, knitting row after row of tiny loops until there are enough to keep me warm.

I make myself get out of bed, when I can. I make myself breakfast, even when I cannot make myself eat it. On days I am unable to make my blanket bigger I make myself smaller to fit underneath it. I learned a lot about curing, but still can’t get the bubbles out from under my surface. I’m filled with pockets of void, reminders that not all the empty got knocked out of me. They catch the light different, see? I’ve chased them every which way with coarse grit sandpaper, buffing rags, polishing cloths. Soft pinked linens. But if I can’t wear my heart embroidered to the front of my shirt, then where can I put it? If not in the center of a wood loop where does my heart go? When the needle bits me it stains nothing. I picked this red thread special, my blood blends right in.

I make myself. Full stop. It started out as searching, as if myself was something somewhere I could find. As if it were fully finished and waiting to jump out and surprise me. It isn’t. But it is something I can create. Something I can salvage, can reclaim, can patch up and wear out. And what a good thing, that I am made and remade. Myself being the one unabandonable project. Because it is hard to ruminate on anything when counting stitches. Still possible to cry while threading bobbins. But the darkness cannot overwhelm me completely when I am creating. Not when—as an instruction manual for a pair of scissors reminds me—“various odd pieces of colorful material can be pinked to make fine scarves.”

There were times I thought I wouldn’t make it; it meaning a new scarf or a summer dress or to my next birthday. I felt like remnant fabric, straight pinned to a pattern. Unsure of what I would become, if anything. The future never seemed to fit me. But I will make it; it being my very own security blanket and a ballgown with pockets and a future in which I am happy. I will make my future by hand if it means I can have one. If there is no pattern, I’ll wing it. I’ll make endless alterations as easy as I breathe, taking in and letting out. Like the pockets of a suit jacket, sewn shut but meant to be cut open. I will make and be made, pinked at the edges, chrome plated shears in hand. Like magician’s wand that can cast stitches as sure as it can cast spells. My mother’s pinking shears are now mine. They were “hot drop-forged in the finest cutlery steel” and so was I. Watch me move mountains with my thumb and forefinger. I will use them to make myself a future. I will look in the mirror and rejoice; I made it. I made it!