Botched Heritage

botch (v.) [from ME bocchen, to mend] = to foul up, to bungle, to put together in a makeshift way



The day I woke up to find a hole
In my thick blue cardigan,
I knew I was in trouble.

My fingers are short and stocky
(Like my father’s; I have his knees too):
They are clever at blind-typing
But stall at pedestrian tasks.
So when I fetched my sewing needle
(The only one I own, slightly bent)
And the spool of thinned-out black thread
(Which I’ve had for decades, possibly),
I stepped into an unknown zone,
Pitifully incompetent.

Like a diver in a helmet,
Trudging heavy on dry land,
I was stumbling with each stitch,
I was losing thread and mission
In the narrow needle’s eye.
And all the while I knew, I felt
That this was a betrayal
Of my grandmother’s fingers,
Dancing delicately, playfully
For years, for decades, in pairs and patterns.

All the hours and patience and
Tenderness she sewed into it,
The Princess of Crocheting,
(Dreaming of children’s children perhaps),
All the cleverness she trained
In her fingertips, and willed
To the next batch -- evolved
(In the new millennium)
Into this earnest, but clumsy,
Botching of heritage.