Mother, Winifred Christine Stainbrook-Etgen
image from poetess' personal scrapbook
This is a repost; I inadvertently deleted this poem a few weeks ago. It is my original poem.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I open the sewing basket, letting my eyes and hands run over the tools she had used—the scissors, the darning egg, the pinking shears, the pins, the tattered, tomato-shaped pincushion, and spools of thread. I gaze at the metal spool-shaped bobbins remembering how, as a small child, I flushed them down the toilet creating quite a ruckus. I finger her antique thimbles recalling her numb fingers and hands. Despite her diminishing eyesight, she quilts until her last day, painstakingly feeling the fabric, cutting the shapes, and hand stitching the pieces together silently suffering from the pricks and misery her needle sometimes inflicted. When tiny drops of cerise colored blood dripped from her fingers nary a tear emerges from her eyes. I close the basket and walk through her sewing room, white silence enveloping it. The faceless dress form patiently waits for her return, an unfinished garment draped over its shoulders. The sewing machine sits idle, its motor no longer whirring and the needle no longer punching through the fabric with its steady, rhythmic chuka, chuka, chuka sound. echoes pierce silence sound of mother’s spirit I know in my heart
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