12 September

birthdays have always been big in my family. growing up, my parents tended to be too busy being revolutionaries and graduate students to take the time and energy to get worked up about holidays. but birthdays? oh, those were super special days - i mean, a birthday is your day and no one has the right to take that away from you, not even a revolutionary. and everyone was expected to treat another's birthday with the reverence it deserved.

like a lot of kids in this world, i did not have a wage earning job and so, when it came to birthdays, i was expected to use my skills and resources found around the house in order to come up with at least a card and hopefully a gift too.

i am sure i have shared with you my atrocious handwriting and rather frightening drawing ability - or rather, lack thereof. but a birthday is a birthday and you do what you can and you put your all into it. and so i would make the most hideous cards but i will say that they were full of love and frustration and lots of shadows where i had used my eraser over and over again, just trying to make things perfect.

so, when i was, i don't know, maybe about 10, i decided that black was my favourite colour - looking in my closet, one might argue that black still is my favourite colour. i knew that, whatever i did, it would have to incorporate black. and what i did was make my mother a personalised pin cushion. i dug through her sewing scraps and found a pink piece of hardy cottong fabric that was just the right size and then i went through her knitting basket and found some black yarn. i took my time and made a border around the pin cushion and stuffed it with other scraps. and finally, the piece de resistance, painstakingly embroidered her initials on each side of the cushion. i was so proud of myself!

i went home to visit and there it was still, next to the sewing machine. and boy is it an eyesore! i couldn't believe that she still had it and so i asked her why she hadn't gotten herself a prettier pin cushion. she looked at me as though i was crazy and said - well, you gave it to me as a birthday present. i like it.
i offered to replace it and she insisted that she liked it find and it still worked very well.
i don't know because i look at that thing and wonder - what the heck was i thinking?

ah mothers.