The Sewing Machine

In a cupboard under a flight of non-descript stairs in a flat in the West country, there’s a sewing machine. An old model, no one knows quite how many years it has been in existence, some speculate thirty, others are less complimentary. Housed in a stiff plastic case, it speaks of patience long gone, with a fiddly bobbin case and stiff levers, which need oiling disproportionately to the amount of stitches sewn. Threading it is easy, when you know how. For almost an hour we didn’t know how, and frustration was creeping in until a relative fashioned the cotton to just the right route.

It belonged to a great-aunt, that much I do know. She’s long dead. I remember her name, the smell of coal in her back parlour, the stiff wooden sofa frame that dug into my back as a child. I used to like visiting, her husband would let us push endless twists of newspaper into the coal fireplace, our eyes widening as they returned to dust in the flames. ‘Pyromaniacs!’ he would exclaim, eyes dancing.

I had asked for the machine last year, on hearing that it was sitting unused in a loft. That didn’t seem right. A few months later it arrived on a ship from a different country, escorted under a Lieutenant’s bed. The journey took several days, rolling about on the frigid seas. It seemed fitting that it took such a journey. In my mind it had no place in the sky on a plane.

A few more months pass until I reach the West country, and I only remember the machine several days into my visit. We reach under the stairs and drag it out, a dead weight. Kneeling on the floor we blow dust from the case and flip open the clasps. It stares at us, stoically I decide later. The mechanism is threaded with pink cotton. A flap raised reveals needles, bobbins threaded with different colours, a small pair of gold scissors.

I wonder what she was thinking, that last time, as the pink thread looped its way into fabric long forgotten. I’m glad she didn’t know, wasn’t’ aware that the thread would only be replaced years later, by a distant relative – one younger than herself – in a far country, without tears. I try to find moisture in dry eyes, the occasion deserves it, but I can’t recall her face, or her voice, her smell. I’m starkly aware of the futility of time, the fleeting nature of life—thundering on unto death. The machine will sew again today. It will find new life, a purpose, until such a time as it ceases up with rust, or is forgotten, left at the back of a cupboard when removal men come.

-----

At 5am the following morning I wake to a buzzing sound, the soundtrack of postmodernity, a text from a friend saying someone in his family has died. A young man, with a hope and future, dead in less than 12 hours. Gone. I boil the kettle and call the friend back. I send love and useless words through space, feeling his grief for a few gradual seconds.

After breakfast I open an email. Friends from a far timezone are expecting their first child. Small grey-white images on a black screen have confirmed it. A warmth spreads over my chest, then a coolness. I’m starkly aware of the futility of time, the fleeting nature of life—thundering on unto death.