Does anyone under the age of seventy know what the accompanying picture is depicting? I have one in my sewing box, not because I use it, but because it belonged to my grandmother. When I see it, it brings back memories of her sitting quietly in the evening her head bent over her needle and thread. She was darning, which brings up another question ----does anyone under seventy even know what darning is?
Today, when a sock gets a hole, it is tossed away and its mate along with it. Not in my grandmother’s day. That sock was put in her sewing basket until she could repair it using our mystery device which is called a darning egg. You can see the contours of the foot in the wood, and the sock would slip over the device so that the hole could be singled out and fixed by a cross-stitching method called darning. I remember socks that had more darning repairs on the heel and toe than original fabric. But with the repairs, that sock could march on to be replaced only when it finally disintegrated beyond repair.
Jump to today where I see ripped and torn jeans everywhere --- in stores, in schools and on television. These are pre-manufactured holes and in some cases one can pay more for these fashion statements, (whatever that statement may be) than for an undamaged pair. The younger set fly this tattered clothing as flags, with no embarrassed mothers off stage waiting with needle and thread. A new generation, a new look.
I have a favorite picture of my husband when he was about eight or nine. He is standing with his friends, wearing the childhood fifties look of cowboy hat and six-shooter and, of course, jeans. If you look closely, you can see that his jeans have a patch on the knee as those pants were probably put to strenuous use, and no self-respecting fifties mother would send one of her children out into the world with holes in their trousers. In addition she would not simply buy another pair as that was wasteful, so the solution was an iron-on blue jeans patch. The pants would continue to be patched until the jeans were outgrown.
But as I truly examine that sepia photo of my husband at nine, I am reminded that each generation looks at things from a different perspective. My eye caught the patch on his jeans, something my grandchildren would never have noticed or cared about. Their eyes would have been caught by the play gun strapped over his jeans, something that was common in his childhood. In the fifties, cowboys were heroes and boys wanted to emulate them in play. Therefore, it is good for all of us to remember that while we are all looking out at the same world, we are not all seeing the same thing. Perhaps the hardest thing to recognize as we age, is not only that our world is disappearing, but that no one but us can even see it any more.