I told a lie yesterday. It wasn’t, as lies go, the worst lie I’ve ever told, but it has had far-reaching implications. Let me explain.
‘How good are you at sewing?’ He asked me. I stared at him for a moment. ‘Exceedingly,’ I replied. ‘You remember ‘Little Women’? That good.’ He didn’t remember ‘Little Women’, or at least he failed to recognize the awesomely apt domesticity allusion I had just made, but he nodded happily and passed me two of his jumpers. ‘I have gotten a hole in my two favourite jumpers,’ He told me. ‘No problem!’ I replied cheerfully. ‘I adore to sew!’
I do not adore to sew. I do not even like to sew. The last thing I attempted to sew was a sampler for my Mother, aged 6 ½. The teacher took one look at it and decided it would work much better as a glasses case, and promptly folded it in half, inside-out, and sewed it up. My Mother does not wear glasses.
I said I could sew because I like to impress. I also truly believe that there lies, hidden deeply beneath this lazy, fickle, self-absorbed sarcastic pleasure-seeker I seem to have turned into, a bona fide Beth, who revels in the simple pleasures of hearth and home.
It is easy enough to convince someone that you can sew- simply take their holey garments, send them to a dry-cleaner and return them later to their owner, mended. The trouble is that now the other person thinks you are a sewer. They will assume that you are also a baker, an ironer, a hooverer. Soon you can never let them anywhere near your home, in case they see that you still staunchly believe that one day a lost Brownie will come and secretly tidy up your flat. But I fear that I have now opened the floodgates, so tonight, instead of smashing ice-cubes against our kitchen counter to make crushed ice for our caipirinhas, I will be making little lavender bags to put in my underwear drawers. Look- I’m new to this, ok? I assume that’s what domestic goddesses do. Now, if I could just work out which of my over-stuffed and randomly filled drawers is meant to be for underwear…
unfashionablylost 