East

Rose

I CAN'T REMEMBER WHEN I first learned that I was born as a replacement for my dead sister, Elise. It was just one of the things I knew, the way I knew other things—like the story of the stormy circumstances of my own birth, the unending catalog of Mother's superstitions, and my father's skill at drawing wind roses.

Mother was always telling me about Elise—how good she was, how she always did as she was told, how she stayed close by, and what a great help she was to Mother in the kitchen.

I never could do any of that. It was partly that curious, exploring side of me—I just had to see or taste or hold whatever it was that had caught my eye. But it was also some crazy restlessness, like my legs needed to be moving. I could never keep still, except once in a while, when I was with Neddy.

It was during one of the rare moments when I was being still with Neddy that I first discovered sewing.

I was very young, maybe four years old. I was sitting on Neddy's lap and he was telling me a story about Bifrost, the rainbow bridge. In the old tales, Bifrost connected our world with Asgard, the home of the gods.

Mother was sitting across from us, by the hearth. And she was mending. I'd heard the word mending before but didn't really know what it meant, except that it had something to do with making clothing last longer, and that it was something I'd be expected to do someday—something that even at age eight Elise had done very neatly and always sat still for. So, whatever it was, mending had seemed a vaguely threatening thing, providing Mother with yet another reason to scold me.

But as I lay back in Neddy's lap, my eyes idly fell on some breeches of mine that Mother was just beginning to work on. There was a great ugly tear in the backside that I had gotten sliding down a small waterfall earlier in the day. My near drowning at the bottom of the waterfall had left me more subdued and tired than usual. I closed my eyes sleepily, drawn into Neddy's description of Thor swinging his mighty hammer as he crossed the rainbow bridge. When I opened my eyes again, I saw that the rip in my breeches had disappeared.

I sat up, wide awake. It was magic.

It might be thought odd that I had never noticed Mother sewing up a hole before, but usually she saved her mending for later in the evening, the peaceful time of day when I was asleep.

I was by her side in a flash, all trace of sleepiness gone, the Bifrost bridge forgotten.

"Do it again," I demanded.

"Do what?" she asked, bewildered.

"Make a hole go away."

She smiled and picked up another piece of mending. She showed me how she threaded the needle, then neatly stitched up a small tear in Sonja's smock.

I watched, avidly, and then said with conviction, "I want to."

Mother hesitated a moment, weighing her natural concern about little fingers and sharp objects against the desire to encourage this unexpected interest in mending. Realizing it was a way to keep me sitting still, she agreed, and though a few drops of blood were spilled, I stubbornly kept at it, determined to master this magical talent. As I poked and prodded the fabric, I badgered Mother with questions about the needle, the pins, and where the thread came from, amazed to learn it came from my own dear sheep Bessie and all her friends and relatives.

From that evening I was hooked, and I know both Neddy and Mother were pleased. Mending was one of the few things that kept me indoors where they could keep an eye on me.