As a last minute addition to some “vintage” furniture I acquired last summer, my mother suggested shipping my grandmother’s sewing table. Although it has been two decades since she died, for complicated reasons, we only recently unboxed things.

Predictably the shippers arrived the day I left town, which also happened to be the kids’ last week of school, and so, in the living room, sat the furniture, piled high and pushed against a wall. It took days until I noticed, nestled among all those wooden legs, a packing box that I’d shifted several times already, still taped shut. Looking to occupy fMhgirl I suggested we unpack what I suspected were the original contents of the sewing table.

I should have been prepared for my emotional response. I burst into tears last summer when my mom lovingly peeled the newspaper back from some long thought lost items that sat in my room at Grandmother’s house. While fMhgirl had already remarked on the distinctive scent of the dresser that arrived, destined for her room, and fitted with locked drawers, she’s been quite intrigued with it. As I bent over to slide the colorful spools of thread into the fitted slots of the top drawer, I caught such a whiff of my grandmother’s sewing room that tears welled up immediately. A small addition off the living room, and hotter than blazes in the summer, that room held all manner of treasures. Skeins of embroidery floss, overflowing baskets of material, a repurposed bureau stuffed with patterns and trims, I spent some of the happiest days of my childhood in there.

I pushed back hard when encouraged to learn the handicrafts my grandmother and mother took up as necessity. Poverty birthed creativity in that house, and all wielded an expert needle. I wore exquisitely tailored handmade clothing until old enough to demand brand names. I have not one but two quilts made by my grandmother and I treasure the crazy one that consists of scraps of familiar dresses and pajamas created over the years for my mother and aunt, my cousins and me. I inherited all of her sewing paraphernalia as the only female child who seemed even remotely likely to take them up, although without her expert hands to guide me, I confess, I can’t work up enthusiasm for the task.

Turning them over to fMhgirl feels right; she bears part of my grandmother’s name, and in her hoped for career I see the fruition of all my grandmother’s frustrated longings, poured out into taffeta formals and plaid school dresses.