The Eye of the Needle
For the most part my mono-vision is working out very well. I can see things at a distance and at arm’s length without a problem. I notice that I tend to hold books a little off to the left (where my eye is focused for near-sighted) and I suspect that I turn my head ever so slightly to the right if I am trying to pin point something a ways away.
The one thing I haven’t mastered is threading a needle. Neither eye … no matter how close or faraway I hold the pin in my hand … can focus enough to discern where the eye is. In these cases, I simply call upon my grandmother for help. Grandma Mabel was an expert seamstress. In as much as a five year old can gauge the craftsman ship of anyone I suppose. I heard stories that she use to sew piecemeal for the war effort and when I was a teenager I was blessed to have one of her old Singer foot peddle machines. I don’t know if we lost that one in the fire or in the many moves of my youth. It’s funny the things that we miss.
Each time I tackle a sewing project — and in my case I use the term loosely since I have no skills in that area — I begin by seeing the image in the iris of my mind. Then I ask for Grandma Mabel’s help and simply sew and pray until it is complete. And somehow they always turn out as envisioned. Funny how things just seem to work like that.
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Prom Dress Circa 2006
My eldest even once asked me to make her prom dress once upon a time. That was a BIG project for Grandma Mabel since before that time I had only sewed Halloween costumes once a year and that was when my children were just tots. But the dress was wonderful, my daughter was happy and I was once again grateful to my Grandmother’s DNA running through my blood stream.
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In a very real sense we are our ancestors. And in a very strange sense as mothers we are our children as well. So with generations before me and one after, it is a small wonder that each of us have so much in common. Recently we also discovered that the POTS (dysautonomia) that I was formally diagnosed with a few years back … is also likely a genetic gift. I say “gift” because who am I to judge some things — like sewing — are praise worthy and other things — like a collagen disorder — are a curse. In the master plan, I have to believe everything has a purpose. That is if I believed there is a master plan.
For my children, their joint hypermobility and standing tachycardia seems to be hereditary. Grandma Mabel died when she was only about 50 years old– but I do believe given her frame and heart troubles that the EDS gene hitchhiked on her double helix. I would then venture a guess that my own mother’s fibromyalgia is also a result of this collagen defect.
Perhaps one day researches will know more about how to mitigate the symptoms or how and when POTS turns from being a minor annoyance to a full on pain in the pocket. For now, it simply is yet one more reminder that we are all connected in this amazing family quilt that has been sewn by the hands of our mother’s mothers and will continue to be handed down for as far as the “I” can see.
