Channeling Maman

Maman and I circa 1985

 My sister and I sit on opposite sides of a long white collapsible table, scissors in hand, swatches of felt in vivid red, navy blue, peacock blue, dark and light greens, and white to our left, patterns, pins, rulers to our right. As we cut the pieces that will later coalesce into figures for three Advent calendars, we chat.  In our adulthood, our collaborations have been limited to celebrations for our parents.  Here we are, though, a retirement-enabled pair enshrining the Christmas story in fabric for our children and grandchildren.  This is my sister’s second go-round.  I am the beneficiary of her careful replication in triplicate last year of her own Advent calendar purchased at a craft show decades before. So here I am, a grateful recipient of an invitation not only to join her in another crafting session this fall, but also to piggy back on her patterns and experience.  Two of the calendars will be mine.

Pieces awaiting assembly

As we cut, count, sort and glue, we swap memories.   Maman creating wedding decorations, knitting Christmas stockings, drawing posters for the church bazaar, making quilts for her grandchildren, or fashioning a Japanese geisha wig from wool, Christmas garland and a ball from roll-on deodorant. Maman, the incomparable seamstress, at her machine.   Watching her, amazed, miter corners, insert sleeves without even a hint of a gathe
r, or make perfect bound buttonholes. Listening to her explain the process as she worked, and share childhood stories and snippets of her own life as a career woman in the forties.  Asking questions, 

prompting her for more, 

filing away the lore and the wisdom.

Angel pieces

 

All the while, I channel my mother so intensely,  I sense she’s sitting beside me.

I’ve channeled Maman often since she left us, eleven years on November 19, at the age of 92.    She reminds me that my crêpes stick because my pan isn’t hot enough. She nudges me to use the “good” dishes, with the bread and butter plates, even if it’s just my husband and me for Sunday dinner.  Oh, and to remember that the knife blades turn inward, toward the plate. I hear her pull from her vast collection of aphorisms:  « Dis-moi qui tu fréquentes, et je te dirai qui tu es » (If I know who your friends are, I know who you are.); “What’s worth doing is worth doing well”; « Quand on crache en l’air, ça nous retombe sur le nez » (Anything you spit up in the air will land on your own nose.).  I catch myself saying to my grandchildren when they visit, “Thank you for coming to see Mémère,” just as she used to say to our children.  

 

Gluing process

I recall her meticulous attention to detail as my sister and I work on
the Advent calendars.  I haven’t sewn since I made my daughter’s dance costumes, seven of them, in 2002. The hems, repairs, and buttons I’ve tackled since hardly qualify as “sewing.”    So I’m a little nervous.  The underside has to be as pretty as the outside (Steve Jobs had nothing on Maman): seams straight, threads tied, no bunching, everything tidy.  With her watching me, I measure several times before I cut.  I work slowly.  I protect the surfaces of the table and any other fabric when I glue.  I want to live up to her standards. 

Figures done

The work advances methodically.  We meet our daily objectives.  Day 1 we shop and cut.  Day 2 we glue.  Day 3 we measure and sew the background, and affix the letters.  Day 4, all there’s left is the doweling, the cord, and the packing.  Done, and ahead of schedule.  Maman would be proud, I think.   I am relieved.  Despite the decades since I’ve done anything like this, I have managed to avoid a calamitous error.  The background and the figures look wonderful.

 

“I love it,” my grandson says, a few days later, after we unroll the calendar and he places the figures,
starting with #1, the stable, and ending with #25, Baby Jesus.  As the star, the palm trees, the sheep, the magi and their camels, the angels, Joseph and then Mary take their place on the landscape while I narrate, I realize that he’s represented the Christmas story through this calendar. I tell Maman that her legacy lives on in our children’s love of reading, in their articulate speech, in the recipes handed down, and in the love they have for the town where I grew up.  Now, for her great-grandchildren, my grandchildren, that legacy perpetuates in this calendar, something she did through me.