Conquer Difficulties

I go to my sewing basket and pull out a spool of variegated thread and the 12 by 12 square of raw silk I’ve been saving and I move to my sewing machine. I begin to thread paint a maple leaf on the silk square. It’s like the leaves that will fall soon from the trees on our front lawn. My son Dom and his older brother Jason played among these trees when they were growing up. Dom has followed his older brother off to college this fall and our home is quiet as a tomb now

We go into our sewing baskets and magic comes out: a square of raw silk embellished with a maple leaf becomes a memory. We go into our sewing baskets to mark a place in time, to remember, to forget and to begin again. We’ve been doing this since the beginning of time. I think that’s why Eliza Jane Clarkson’s sewing box called out to me when I saw it at the Flynt Center in Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, Massachusetts. It is a Chinese laquerware piece that holds the tools of her needle art: carved ivory needle cases, a red satin pin cushion, an ivory “sewing bird” (a portable pin cushion for her to take along) and tiny balls of ivory colored thread. In the middle of the sewing table is a note written in her own hand that a museum curator found some time ago. It reads “Conquer difficulties.”

Mrs. Clarkson hailed from Gloucester, Massachusetts. She lived in the mid-1800s and died in 1907. Eliza married a seafaring man and adventurer, Capt. James A. Clarkson of Gloucester. In 1849, as trade to the Far East opened, he decided his wife should enjoy an adventure, too. Eliza was pleasantly surprised and grateful as she would be one of the first women to travel the ocean to the Far East.

Their ship, the Marathon, cruised to “far away islands and Manila” as reported in the Gloucester Telegraph at the time. At some port she bought the beautiful sewing box with its intricate handwork and foreign beauty. As they were headed for home tragedy struck. Mid-ocean her husband died unexpectedly.

Eliza was the only woman on a ship of superstitious sailors. They wanted the body, and the bad energy that might be with it, thrown overboard. Eliza was adamant that her husband be brought home and buried in Gloucester. Gathering every bit of strength she could, she took a firm stand and assumed charge of the ship. She conquered her difficulties.

It took four months of sailing, that included stops at various islands and help from American consulates, but Eliza got her husband home. And her life went on.

She put all her memories of that trip in her sewing box—sketches and mementos—and she put a reminder to be strong, “Conquer difficulties” as she wrote on the slip of paper to herself. It’s as much of an affirmation of what she did to get her husband home as what she would need to do to live out her life, eighty seven years in all, without him.

When we go to our sewing boxes the messages we send ourselves might not be as concrete at Eliza’s note to herself but they are just as meaningful: my maple leaf that reminds me that memories of little boys running among trees soften an empty nest; one paper-pieced flower reminds me of the comfort quilt our sewing group made for Corrine when she was dying; a hand-pieced star helps me look forward as it joins others to form a crib quilt for my new nephew.