The importance of mending

MagsRags

MagsRags

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This was sent to employees at my place of work as one of a series called "Food for Thought", and it really spoke to me. It applies to people, and to the heart and soul of why we care about new life for old clothes.

We All Need Mending

Like most women of her generation, my grandmother, whom I called Nonie, was an excellent seamstress. Born in 1879 in Galveston, Texas, she made most of her own clothes. Widowed at forty-three and forced to count every penny, she sewed her three daughters’ clothes and some of their children’s as well.

I can knit but I cannot sew new creations from tissue paper patterns. Whenever I try, I break out in a sweat and tear the paper. It clearly requires more patience, more math, more exactitude than I am willing or capable of giving.

Recently, though, I have come to relish the moments when I sit down and, somewhat clumsily, repair a torn shirt, hem a skirt, patch a pair of jeans, and I realize that I believe in mending. The solace and comfort I feel when I pick up my needle and thread clearly exceeds the mere rescue of a piece of clothing. It is a time to stop, a time to quit running around trying to make figurative ends meet; it is a chance to sew actual rips together. I can’t stop the war in Iraq, I can’t reverse global warming, I can’t solve the problems of my community or the world, but I can mend things at hand. I can darn a pair of socks.

Accomplishing small tasks, in this case saving something that might otherwise have been thrown away, is satisfying and, perhaps, even inspiring.

Mending something is different from fixing it. Fixing it suggests that evidence of the problem will disappear. I see mending as a preservation of history and a proclamation of hope. When we mend broken relationships we realize that we’re better together than apart, and perhaps even stronger for the rip and the repair.

When Nonie was seventy-eight and living alone in a small apartment in New Jersey, a man smashed the window of her bedroom where she lay sleeping and raped her. It was so horrific, as any rape is, that even in our pretty open, highly verbal family, no one mentioned it. I didn’t learn about it for almost five years. What I did notice, though, was that Nonie stopped sewing new clothes. All she did was to mend anything she could get her hands on as though she could somehow soothe the wound, piece back together her broken heart, soul, and body by making sure that nothing appeared unraveled or undone as she had been.

Mending doesn’t say, “This never happened.” It says, instead, “Something or someone was surely broken here, but with grace it will rise to new life.” So to my old pajamas, the fence around the garden, the friendship torn by misunderstanding, a country being ripped apart by economic and social inequity, and a global divide of enormous proportions.......... they all need mending.

I’m starting with the pajamas.

By Susan Cooke Kittredge
Senior Minister at the Old Meeting House
East Montpelier Center, Vermont
Click to expand...
 
Thank you for posting that. I'm going to send it to some of my friends. It's really something to think about.
 
That is SO beautiful. It speaks to things our society as a whole has lost--the ability to rise above adversity and repair marriages, relationships, communities--all of this in the larger sense. But also the will to make new out of old, "make do" instead of needing to "have new," working with our hands, repairing our things instead of throwing them out. So many lessons here.

Thanks for sharing!
 
Beautiful piece - thank you.

I do lots of mending (of vintage garments) and agree that it can be quite spiritual. It's soothing and calm, and I get enormous satisfaction out of using my skills to resurrect something that has been discarded.

Nicole
 
I like mending, really. Wish I could go further and make something I want to wear from a pile of fabric. Can you imagine the satisfaction?
It's neat to see how long a mend will last sometimes, or to see what else can be made of the once something else fabric.
 
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