With Every Seam: Stitching Love into Christmas Presents

            Lately I’ve had presents on my mind, but not the receiving of them. Instead I’ve been pondering the heartfelt and personalized generosity that I was lucky enough to grow up with in my family each holiday. My mother was, and is, a gift giver of incredible skill to respect and admire, and she embodied the idea that making a gift for someone imbues it with a love that radiates from every inch of the item created. I’ve taken this idea to heart, and even in an age of Amazon boxes and online catalogs (the gifts from which can show much love as well) I always make sure to make, or order handmade, some of my gifts each year, especially for my most beloved, my husband Tom.

            Each year he tells me not to stress myself about the giving; that he has an Amazon wish list filled with the movies and video games he would like for his collection. And each year I do order some items from that list. But I don’t feel like I’ve quite finished my gift gathering for him until I’ve made him something, even if it’s small and silly, and I’ve gotten him something that he had no idea existed.

            Growing up, my family wasn’t poor, but we certainly weren’t rich either. I would guess that we were at about the upper end of lower class, or the lower end of middle class. We never went without food, and mom had a homemade meal on the table every day, but sometimes the milk she used in a recipe was dry milk, and at times she had to get creative. One of the ways she would get creative was with our Christmas gifts. In the years of my childhood when Cabbage Patch Kids dolls were all the rage, she bought lookalike doll heads from a craft store and made us our own. When Popples (anyone remember those?) were a trend, mom made me my own Popple too. She used her skill and love to stitch her heart into every seam and stuff it with motherly devotion as well as cotton batting.

            My favorite gift of my entire childhood came at a time that I was really enamored with Raggedy Ann. I loved all of her stories and her red yarn hair and triangle eyes. That year for Christmas, I received a Raggedy Anne doll handmade by my mother, down to her embroidered nose and stitched candy heart. Her dress was made from a red and blue patterned fabric, and she came with a cassette tape with the same fabric glued to the sides, and a book of Raggedy Ann stories. The tape had a recording of my mom reading every story from the book, using voices for all the characters.

            Sometimes as a child, I was foolish and would be a little disappointed that I hadn’t received an actual name brand item. Looking back on it as an adult, I realize how completely idiotic that was. A random worker in a factory wouldn’t have put one-one-thousandth of the amount of emotion into the creation of that doll or plush placed into a cardboard box and sent to the store.

            Thinking back on all of the quiet and unassuming ways my mother showed her love when I was a child, I feel so incredibly thankful. And even though I know I did appreciate it as a child, I get emotional wishing that I had appreciated it more. That I could have seen it with the maturity of an adult, and realized just how much it meant. A few years ago, mom struck again with her generous loving gifts. Tom and I went over to their house for Christmas, and their gift for me was a slip of paper, leading me through a series of clues that eventually led me to their bedroom, where a sheet was on top of the bed. I “unwrapped” my gift by folding down the sheet to find the most exquisitely beautiful handmade quilt I’d ever seen, and I started crying.

            I am an adult now, one with a husband of my own who I adore and make loving gifts for. I know what that quilt means. I know what the Raggedy Ann doll who still sits in a place of honor in my Dreaming Room means. Every winter now, I look forward to the first night that is cold enough to spread that quilt across the bed. It somehow keeps me warm on the coldest nights, but isn’t too hot on the warmer ones. I know why: love. It means love. It means the spirit of the season. And it means a not so small small part of my mom is with me always, even when she’s miles away. Thank you, mom, for every stitch and seam of love. I will cherish it as long as I live.