A Stitch in Time

Photo: Peter Max "Running Man in Space" from 1970s lithograph by artist, made into an embroidery kit for kids. Man, clad in rose-colored jumpsuit, is running past the outline of a ringed planet while sequin stars populate the background.

    Over the holidays, in a funk of missing our kids and their families, I hauled four boxes of 'memories and treasures' up from the basement where they'd lain for sixteen years between six jostling relocations. There I found old report cards, field day ribbons, photographs, birthday greetings and love letters - things that I collected over the last 39 years. I also found a partially completed embroidery kit from my childhood. 

    I'm not sure how it survived this long. My parents weren't overly sentimental like me so they weren't inclined to save things, but somehow it had meant enough to me that I held onto it well into middle age. I remember receiving it as a birthday gift, at a time when I was intrigued by my mother's sewing and crochet projects. This kit was the gateway to stitchery, something I could practice on my own.

    Long forgotten until I stumbled upon it, all that was left of the kit was the unbleached cotton cloth, imprinted with faint blue guide lines forming the psychedelic art of Peter Max. Max was known for vivid colors, fantasia designs, and exemplified the aesthetic of the day. It was wrinkled and faded, stitches incomplete and the work betrayed the gratification of child's play. It was stardust.

    My 56-year-old stitches were a bit more tidy than my 10-year-old ones and I felt the momentary urge to fix things, to replace sloppy shortcuts. But it just felt sacrilegious to pick out the earnest work of a kid who had no idea that her wizened adult self would correct her hasty efforts decades in the future. 

    I grew up in the 1970s, in Southern California. It was the time of free-love hippies, trippy music, bell bottom jeans and TV dinners. Somewhere beyond my periphery was Nixon, the Vietnam War, the oil crisis and attempted assassinations. I was too young to care about the wide world, but curious enough to learn as much as I could about everything, giving special-alert-ears to grown-ups' talk.

    My parents had emigrated to the US in their mid-30s, with a kindergartner and an infant. They left the security and comfort of their motherland to see their children educated in an advanced country. Life in America, rather than being easier for them, was undoubtedly more difficult: back home in Sri Lanka my father had his own business, my mother didn't work, they had domestic help and the safety net of family. They lived in a beautiful custom-built home in a nice part of the city, had cars, and lived a comfortable existence. 

    When they arrived in the US, they were only permitted to bring $200 for each of us, and landed knowing no one, save some friends-of-friends in the vast metropolis of Los Angeles. What my father lacked most back home was freedom. He felt stifled by the government and limited by what was available in that small island nation. When my father got an idea into his head, he was hard to dissuade. Especially when it came to his family. Then he was relentless.

    Before long, they'd established themselves, got jobs, bought a house, a Chevy Impala, and enrolled my brother and me in parochial schools. Though life was not easy (the streets were not lined with gold, as predicted), they were happy. Most of all, they could Do. Whatever. The. Hell. They. Wanted. They could sink or swim, do or die, succeed or fail, all on their own merits and motivations.

    As I threaded the needle with vibrant embroidery floss, filling in with satin-stitch the areas that my kid-self only outlined, I didn't blame her for being in a hurry and doing a less-than-thorough job. I had the luxury of time-management now and the experience to fix imperfections. I could even throw the whole heap in the garbage, but I decided that lovingly working, with interest/with abandon, was the most rewarding thing of all. I simply couldn't stop once I'd started.

    My stitches still were not perfect, there were gaps and misses, there were areas I couldn't fix, and it was still an old piece of cotton cloth with small stains and a few tiny holes. But the whole of it was deliciously psychedelic, a bit abstract, and well - a blast from the past that I could work on still and make better. It was incredibly satisfying to Do. Whatever. The. Hell. I. Wanted. 

Photo: Peter Max embroidery kit from circa 1972; blue lines show where the stitches go. The kit also came with tiny felt dots, sequins shaped like circles and stars to be applied as embellishments.