My momma used to say that my grand-momma would can shoe-strings if someone left them on her door step.
And while I know she wouldn’t can ‘um, I also know she would find a way to use’um in the process.
My Daddy’s Momma came from a family of thirteen and she was a frugal as they come. There was no such thing as a “scrap”; everything had “potential” as she used to say. She just about raised me cause Momma and Daddy both worked and I was always at Grandma’s. There wasn’t a craft in the world that she didn’t teach, or “attempt” to teach me, cause you know, “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.” I used to watch her turn little pieces of left over pie crust into brown-sugar “stickies”; tomato skins, celery leaves and turnip greens into as fresh a vegetable broth as you could ever want. And yes, lord, she put up tomatoes, green beans, squash and just about any other vegetable folks would leave on her porch-step. It was a matter of respect she would say. Respect for the farmer and respect for the beans.
Grandma was a dress-maker, that’s what she did for a livin' after all was said and done. I went to sleep many an afternoon, listenin' to the hum of her sewin' machine and ease-droppin' on the conversations of neighbors when they would come over for a fittin'. Grandma made her own patterns out of brown paper bags or newspaper, she had a knack for that, and she would fit it to a tee, right on you. She had a long silver mirror right on the back of the door and I could see by the faces in that mirror that most everyone was pleased. Grandma sat on the floor with pins in her mouth and chalk in her hand, but you can bet she had one eye on that “glass-face” to make sure all was goin' to the likin' of her customer. She could read the slightest turn of the head or pucker of the lips and knew right off which gestures signaled success and which meant a seam or dart needed to be “adjusted”. When hemlines started to go up in the 60’s, I saw Grandma bite her lips more than once when a little too much knee came poking out on a lady that had best have kept that little bit hidden from public view. But it was about the customer and Grandma would say, “Might as well put it where she wants it or she’ll roll that hem over when she gets home and somebody’s gonna think I’m gittin sloppy in my handwork.”
But all of this aside, it was all about the remnants; those little pieces of what was left over that Grandma worked magic with. “That’s just too good to just toss aside,” she would say. Now pull out that box of scraps and let’s see what we can put together." So bits and pieces became wool and satin quilts and doll clothes, while ugly yarn all to often became even uglier pot holders. But the bottom line was always, the “potential”.
And so I grew; and I learned to turn my head to the side and use “my other eye” as Grandma would say. She said people were the same way, if you look hard, you can find somethin' good, you can find potential in most everybody. She said, people, in the “right mix” could surprise you. Some folks don’t “stand alone” well, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have somethin' to give, didn’t have value. If somebody hurt my feelins she used to make me tell her, “what hurt” and work me through it if it was only my ego that got bruised. If I retreated, she gave me a chore, like sortin' buttons, or rollin' satin ribbon from the grab-bags that the ribbon mill gave out at the end of the month. By the time Momma got off work, everything was “All right”. That’s what Grandma used to say, she’d begin and end with those words, like they were one; allright.
But I digress cause I started all this to tell you about this sad little pint of withered cherry tomatoes I saw today at the farm stand that this lady was gonna throw out cause she said they weren’t worth sellin; and I clear as a bell, could hear my grandma whisper, “Sis, those are just as sweet as can be, take’um home and turn’um into somthin’. It wasn't a second, and the lady said, “Take’um if you want’um, some people can turn anything into somethin’, they’re probably allright.
They are always with us, those we have loved, they speak through people, circumstance, happenstance, and nuance.
So be still and listen. All-right?
Crispin Sartwell, in his book Six Names of Beauty describes wabi-sabi, a concept from Japanese culture to describe “the beauty of the withered, weathered, tarnished, scarred, intimate, coarse, earthly, evanescent, tentative, ephemeral.”
