Seamstress.

In a former life, I sewed a lot. I grew up, of course, in the late sixties and seventies, and loads of people made their own clothes, or adapted clothes, or remade things, etc. I took Home Ec. I sewed dresses for myself and also I learned to make food items from other food items, like Balloon Buns from a butter and cinnamon-sugar dipped marshmallow rolled into a crescent roll dough triangle and baked till the marshmallow melted, leaving behind an ineffable caramelized redolence of sugar. That, my friends, was a culinary art unto itself.

However, sewing: I learned how to lay out a pattern and how to rip out a seam that I sewed badly because--as with everything else--I was and am impatient and hasty and a hurrier. I learned sewing situations that were ideal for my skill level--making the same pattern for the third time, for instance--and sewing situations that were always going to be a disaster--high fashion-pretender patterns that ended up just being weird. Also, over the years, I find that filling a bobbin with thread is, like, quantum physics, and thus my sewing machine sits idle.

However: I can hem a clothing item. And I can sew on a button. I can mend a torn pocket.

Last night I sewed loose buttons on one two three coats while we watched an especially speedy and plot-stirring episode of The Good Wife. Tonight, whilst the historian did tedious and swear-inducing work at his desk, I hemmed a skirt that was just a little bit too long. I cut off the too long part in a three-inch wide swath. Then I folded the cut edge into a narrow hem and stitched away while watching Master of None. Very satisfying.

Over the past few weeks, I did some of my most delicate work yet by hand, mending the pockets of a pair of jeans that my youngest son would be taking with him when he moved to Massachusetts. The fabric of the pockets was quite thin, so thin that I surmised the makers of this garment had chosen a cheap and unsuitable fabric for the pockets of a young man's jeans, what with car keys and coins and whatnot. Even so, I fitted the torn edges together while we chatted away about this or that. At least I think we chatted while I sewed. I like that image, me fixing the pockets for my son, because I had learnt to sew in olden times, and him talking to me while I sewed my very sturdy stitches. The pocket, if flattened into a single layer, would look like a crazed scar. But it was mended, and it's possible--I like to think so--that he may even have worn the jeans when he got in his new car and drove away, across America.

Saturday, summer movies, a departure.

Move out day for youngest
means dress up day for Bruiser.

Today, I kept working on my book situation. But first I cooked some oatmeal, to fortify myself. I spent just about the whole day. Fiction, nonfiction, literary theory and criticism. Two words: dust, and order. I had an intimate relationship with the former, and a grateful relationship with the imminence of the latter. I am currently sitting in a room where the books are in their places on the shelves, practically singing their names to me, and jostling in a friendly manner up against their various neighbors. It's a good feeling.

At 2, my son, who was wreaking order out of the basement, because he is in the process of moving out, came up and asked me if I wanted to get a sandwich. I practically dropped the books/dust from my hands and said YES. Because the Lord only knew how very much I needed a sandwich at that moment. We ate and chatted, and then returned to our respective tasks.

A bit later, he packed his worldly goods, wadded into white garbage sacks, into the van of his friend, and drove away. So we did the only sensible thing: went to a movie.

Actually, this weekend we saw two movies--Spy and Love and Mercy. Here are my thoughts and recommendations.

1. Spy is a winner, because it is super funny. I loved it, the historian liked it, my son liked it. Melissa McCarthy is at her best. Allison Janney: hilarious. Jude Law: very good. Jason Statham: a comic performance to cherish for the ages. Same director as the amazingly funny Bridesmaids, Paul Feig, and this is just as funny and just as wonderful, as fresh and irreverent and sharp, and feminist to boot.

2. Love and Mercy has a more experimental form, in some ways, and has some long spots--also, it tells a story with some dark and sad parts. But ultimately, the story of how Brian Wilson found his way back to enough health and well-being to take up music again. Since I got home, I've been watching this beautiful documentary about Smile, and it is making me cherish the music anew.

I recommend both, with the following caveats: see Spy if you know you will enjoy a ridiculously entertaining and hilarious movie with many many swears, and also some comic spy-type violence and gunplay. I looked away once or twice. But I laughed a countless amount of times. See Love and Mercy if you love that music, definitely--and if you love music and love thinking about how such music gets made.

We drove home in a rain and lightning storm, and took Bruiser for his walk in the cool after. And now, it's very quiet.

My digital story.

I made this digital story in Denver last October, at a digital storytelling workshop. Since I'm working with other people on their digital stories, I thought I should share mine. It might be a little bit sentimental.


the conversation from lisab on Vimeo.

(p.s. you can make it bigger, and it sounds really good with headphones on.)

Things I am enjoying right about now.

1. The first-thing-in-the-morning sun, and the last-thing-at-the-end-of-the-day sun.

2. The moon in a nest of clouds.

3. The last tomatoes.

4. The last peaches.

5. Walking the dog in the late evening.

6. My adult children, with their full beautiful lives and the little connections I have with them almost every day.

7. A bagel in the morning.

8. Re-acquainting myself with how sentences work (the subject matter of one of my classes).

9. Choosing clothes to wear every day.

10. Looking forward to a movie tomorrow night. What movie? Who cares?

Wait for it . . . the annual Best Movies So Far post, coming up this weekend.

Mother's Day.

I just got off the phone with my son who is in Malaysia, professing his faith to people who want to, or are willing to, listen. All day long I've had conversations of one kind or another with my children, and I hope no one will be too appalled if what I have to say today is this:

I am glad that I am a mother. I am grateful to every single one of my children for the chance I have had to be his or her mother. Each of these children is an incalculable blessing in my life.

Becoming a mother, both initially and over time, has been the single most transformative experience of my life. For me, it was the chance to see the world in a different way--to understand that what I felt for my children in some version or another was what other people felt for their children, and that therefore I had an obligation not to live in the world in such a way that I made the world harder for everyone else.

I know that it's not possible to mitigate everything--the privilege I assume just by being American, white, middle-class. I know that the burden of a single American child on the earth is exponentially larger than a child born almost anywhere else.

Even so, I am grateful for the kind hearts, the enormous talents, the impulse to do good, the thoughtfulness, the intelligence, the wit and the music of all of my children. Today, and every day, I am very glad I am a mother. Thank you, all my children, for letting me practice motherhood with you.