Sewing Machines

 (c) 01/31/2021

This is not the refurbished 1950s sewing machine my mother gave me.
With care and oiling, that one is as indestructible as tradition.
 
This is not Grandma’s human-powered, treadle-foot machine
built to pass through generations; an heirloom
with a mahogany table where, with some muscle
everything can be lifted in to and out of place.
 
My great-great-great grandmother labored in an apple-orchard
and sewed to survive. She mended gathering bags with an awl.
Everything else serviced by her needle case full of needles,
a thimble, and filigreed embroidery scissors,
no longer sharp, but still with heft.
Her fingertips tenderized by the metal and the shank,
skin cracked from twisting knots and spittle.
 
This machine is new. It is meant for nothing beyond mending.
Why does it annoy me? Sitting uncovered on the craft desk
where I haven’t crafted for years.
Where I have let such usefulness go useless.
How many quilt tops, how many face masks, how many
little black dresses must I sew to satisfy our compulsion
for production and consumption?  Why does it trouble my image of femininity?
 
This machine is a new model. The metal shell has been replaced with plastic.
Someday it will be abandoned to a landfill and the plastic
will be shipped alongside mounds of synthetic clothing to China.
Or to India. Or Indonesia. Or Malaysia.  My machine dumped in the Ocean.
When values shift, something is always discarded.
 
There is a Red S logo on the front piece.  
It’s not there for Sew. Or for Slow fashion.
It like to think it is there for Solace. Many mistakes will be made
on this machine.  Or S is for Study, to turn those mistakes into learning.
Or for an illusion of Sustainability. For Simplicity.
For concepts once discarded, that are slowly returning.
 
I wonder if hand sewing can return us to deeper connection
with time, with a more creative production;
or if the slow movement is only a privilege afforded a middle-class;
familiar with having someone there to thread the magnetized needles
of want or need regardless of boom or bust.
 
Relatively expensive, never a technologically leader,
still the world’s bestselling machine; Singer
mass-marketed to women’s sticking points.  
The need to fulfill her godly role of caring for her family.
The need to feel fully feminine.
The need for affordable clothing suitable for working outside the house.
The need to domesticate women and return them home.
The need for teenagers to be on-trend
as they aimed at getting right what their parents got wrong.
The desire to be seen. To express through embellishments.
To be one-off from common. The desire for fit. To fit.
Demand collapses during depressions.