An Old Sewing Machine

   My grandmother died on December 22, the other week, just 2 days before my 44th birthday.  It was not a huge surprise, she'd been put in hospice care the previous week and was 95, but it just broke my heart.  She was my last surviving grandparent, I lived with her for a while, and I credit all of my talents to her and her sisters.  I volunteered to write something for her memorial service this coming Saturday, but I just don't know where to start.  She taught me to sew, what I do pretty much every day and for my own business, not to mention my sanity, and she is probably the reason I love pink so much.  When she first sold her house and moved into assisted living I made it a point to wear pink every day for a really long time.  It was her favorite color, especially in flowers.
  I remember the feel of the velvet of the couch in her living room in Texas.  I remember the blades of grass in her backyard, almost double, and I can't remember the name of it.
  There was a pull-up bar on one of the big trees back there that my grandfather used. It was grown into the tree.
  When my grandparents celebrated their 50th anniversary with a party at their church I wore her wedding dress, that she made.  It is white and has tiny buttons all the way down the front and a little train.  She was taller than I am, so the waist is at least an inch lower than it should be.  I have that dress in a closet upstairs, and the original pattern is in my studio downstairs.
  The room that used to be my mom's and my aunt's had really soft blankets and sheets with really big butterflies and little dressing tables built into the wall.  My parents used to sleep in there when we all visited, but when my brother and I lived with them for a while it was my room.  It was right next to the pink-tiled bathroom that had these little houses that they brought back from vacations in Bermuda.  I thought that it was so exotic that they'd go on vacation and have to fly through the Bermuda Triangle to get where they were going.  Those little houses had pink roofs.  The room with the butterfly blankets had a table with one of those pop-up sewing machines.  My grandmom taught me to sew on that.  It was green.  She was an amazing quilter, actually did most of her sewing by hand, but we made a beautiful white eyelet dress for a junior high dance on that machine. It had pink ribbon woven through it and Brooke Shields was the model for the pattern photo.  I thought I would deep the dress forever, but it must have gotten lost during one of my many moves through all those years.
  Today my aunt, my mom's sister, emailed me to tell me that my grandmother's next door neighbor in Texas bought her old sewing machine, the one she taught me to sew on, because she "didn't want it to be sold to a stranger."  She had a new one and never used it, but she bought it anyway. She still has it and will be on it's way to me later this week.  I don't care if it's hokey sounding, but that makes me happier and calmer than I can put into words.  Maybe I'll just write about sewing.  The minister will have to read it thought, because I am pretty much known as a big cryer.