Wisdom from Reality TV

Last week was a really hard week. Each day came with terrible news. I’m fine and my kids are fine. But a relative was diagnosed with a terrible illness. A friend’s child woke up dead and a sweet young man committed suicide. It’s all a bit much to assimilate in just a few days. It does make it hard to work.

My kids have begun subscribing to Netflix. We have been enjoying an orgy of reality TV. My son now claims to be addicted to Intervention . Watching Hoarders has convinced me that we don’t need to keep quite as much stuff as we currently keep around. My husband gets very attached to objects. He also feels strongly that just a few holes or wear spots doesn’t mean that something isn’t perfectly good.

I was given a block printed table cloth several years ago. It had belonged to my friend’s mother. it’s hand printed cotton from India and was purchased from Bonwit- Teller in the mid 1960’s. I assume that when it was new it had a coarse feel. It's been washed so often that it is now as soft as gauze. The cloth has several wear holes and many stains. I cut the cloth into blocks along the large squares of the design. I discarded the damaged squares. I stacked two squares together with the right sides facing out. I serged the squares together. Then I folded the edges twice to the inside and stitched a decorative stitch in the ditch. I used an orange rayon thread, because it needed to get used up.

Now, I have three new napkins. You could say that this was a complete waste of time and effort. I don't see it quite that way. The cloth that was not so nice to use because of the holes and stains is no longer in circulation. The three napkins take up a whole lot less room than the one damaged cloth. I love the cloth and how it is just a slice of textile history. One of the hardest things for me to do are the refined bits of sewing. Practicing beautiful mitered corners means that when I need to do a lovely mitered corner on a tallit or a challah cover, I will be able to di it with ease and finesse.

I also find that these sorts of nearly mindless projects tend to prime the creative pump. I’m always grateful that I have spent time on these dumb on the face of it projects.

Here you can see the napkin lining. The napkins are so soft they would disintegrate without the lining. I realized that the folded hems will add to the longevity of the napkins.

All of my old sewing books talk about thrifty measures to remake worn our household goods so they will be useful. I see this table cloth to napkin transformation as part of that tradition of thrifty home making. We often struggle with objects that are worn, we have fondness for but can’t really use because they are damaged. I find that those damaged but beloved objects often take up an awful lot of space in my home and in my life. I’m glad that I came up with a solution that keeps the table cloth in my life but in an un-burdensome way.

So perhaps we aren’t hoarders after all.

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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