Conversation with my sister

I am more excited than you can imagine about learning how to sew.  My sister, Toni, sews very well, so I asked her Wednesday night across the dinner table in Cowboy Grub,  "Did Mother teach you how to sew?"

"Heavens, no," she said.  "I took three years of sewing in school."

I never knew this.  I thought maybe my sisters were more tractable than I was when it came to parental instruction.

My memory is sitting with her, making a mistake, and Mother huffing and puffing and pulling the fabric away, saying, "Here, let me do it."

She didn't like us in her kitchen either.  Not that I wanted to learn to cook.  I liked making a cake once in awhile, and I still enjoy baking: cakes, cookies, muffins, popovers, and butter cream frosting (even when there's not a cake).  Raw meat repels me.

She did teach us how to clean house and my sisters are all excellent housekeepers.  I would rather work outside the home and have someone else do the cleaning.  There's nothing like coming home from work to an an immaculate house done by seemingly magic elves.

Anyway, after dinner, Toni and Jesse came over so she could show me (again) how to fill the bobbin  on my own sewing machine.  It usually sits like a fossil in back of the closet.

It wasn't all that clear to me, even as she showed me, how to do it.  I have high anxiety when it comes to mechanical things, but I did learn it.

Toni was a kind and efficient instructor.