actually, i was not prepared for the sight of my own son holding a needle (!) and thread (!!!) , and a very green satiny material, the kind you see used in really shiny lingerie . Upon closer inspection, i realized that my son, my very boyish, rowdy, ebullient, soccer playing, hard kicking, testosterone awakening bundle of joy, was...embroidering ????
He was stitching , stitching, stitching. Cross there, then here, and voila, they formed little X's in neat little progressions. Wow. You did that? i queried. All by myself , he said smugly.
This was an awakening of sorts for me. After all, all this time, i took it for granted that i was all for gender equality. women should have equal rights, the glass ceiling has long been shattered, and us women stood under it to catch the shards that fell and ground them out to fine dust with our designer shod feet, just to make sure. anybody else who thought differently was a Neanderthal. but now that the tables were turned...i wasn't quite sure how to react to the sight of this boy deftly pushing a needle in and out of this fabric.
He was enjoying it, actually enjoying it! Look mom, he adds with relish, my teacher said my stitches were really neat.
And they were. I was astounded. he was almost 80% done. and he wasn't about to put it down either, to perhaps play with his Wii or to kick his soccerball out in the garden. He was determined to finish it. for the first time , his toys and games and books took the back seat. My son, the french knot expert. My son the embroiderer. My son...a future Dior or Lauren ? Heck, i don't mind at all--- after all !!!!!!!
He did come home one day with the news that he got the highest marks for that embroidery project , that turned out to be a pillow case for a small bolster pillow something. It turned out really nice, despite and inspite of that so satiny and so shiny green fabric (that of course was redundant, but i still can't get over that shine, nor that green-ness). A far cry from my own efforts when i was in grade school myself, and every stitch i made using a french needle for a home ec project somehow always turned dark or gray or plain dirty, no matter how many times i washed my hands before starting.And i never got to finish any home ec project either, not a single one for embroidery. well, i guess he didn't get his embroidery skills from my side of the family then. But i was thrilled that his very green , very satiny, very shiny bolster pillow was ...well ...perfect. Perfectly satiny, shiny and green. I loved it!
And so did my son, who proceeded to kick his bolster pillow around the room. Look mom, i can kick it ...and...and----- it hasn't broken anything !
Well. I didn't rush out to buy him bolts of textiles and fabrics and skeins of threads and yarns that day.True, he loved that bolster pillow , until the day it went to bolster pillow heaven. But sadly, he never picked up the needle again. Sigh. I guess his inner Dior or Lauren wasn't nurtured enough...but hey, there's hope yet. who knows, maybe one day, he will discover...crochet.
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