Emily stared at the silvery strand of hair glistening in the sunlight. It dangled from her grandmother’s rose-toned fingers like a thin stream of water. The older woman plucked another long strand from her own head and knotted it to the other. For much of Emily’s memory, her grandmother, Ava, had spent each morning sitting in her gray recliner like this, a craft in hand, blanketed in the sunrise sparkling across the ocean visible outside the living room window.
Usually, Ava pulled thread from a spool and slid it through the needle’s eye, but today was different. Emily poked all her fingers through the holes of the yellow crocheted afghan covering the other recliner in which she sat. The little yarn hug kept her from fidgeting.
“Today you will learn the rocking stitch,” Ava said.
She plucked four more hairs and added them end-to-end to the others, making one long string that draped over her lap and pooled on the floor. She threaded the needle with the hair. Even though she was ninety years old, Ava didn’t need to squint her steel-blue eyes. Her fingers moved stiffly as if pushing through a tide.
Emily curled under her toes in her socks. The seam pressed against her toe knuckles. The only thing she had sewn in her sixteen years was a simple plushie, which her home economics teacher used as an example of what not to do. She endured the embarrassment similarly, by watching her sneakers bulge.
“Can’t I learn on the machine?” Emily asked.
“No, my dear. The machine can’t tell our stories. That is our real work here.”
Ava stabbed the threaded needle into a pock-marked tomato pincushion and lifted a familiar wicker basket from the floor. The basket had been a doll bed, a stuffed bunny’s hutch, a gateway into a tiny world.
Emily wished she was still young enough to play, to visit the many places the basket once took her—when life was simple and not clouded with the mist of uncertain change, when she wasn’t expected to carry on a tradition she knew she would fail at, wishing she didn’t have to watch what her grandmother was going to do.
“Watch carefully now.”
Ava placed two square fabric stacks on the table. She gave the smaller one to Emily and matched the top two squares from her own stack. Emily copied.
“This white flannel is from my favorite nightgown as a child,” Ava said and demonstrated how to mark a quarter-inch seam allowance with a ruler and chalk. She slid the tools across the table.
“Yours are scraps from a dress you once wore. I saved the rest of the dress for you to use with your own grandchild one day.”
Emily pulled the squares apart, examining the faint brown blob staining the fabric. Her hands dropped to her lap.
“I don’t remember.”
“No one remembers when they’re two years old.” Ava winked. “It’s my job to remember for you, just as yours will be to remember for me. Measure carefully.”
Emily traced her fingers around the stain, vaguely shaped like the tiny starfish she’d poke with a stick.
“We were at the tide pool?”
“Every morning after breakfast.” Ava nodded to the tools. “Enough stalling.”
With a sigh, Emily measured and marked the fabric, knowing her grandmother wouldn’t let her slack off when there was work to be done. Ava munched on pretzels set out on the tea tray while she waited.
“This square,” Ava patted sky-blue fabric with red flowers, “is from the scarf my favorite teddy bear wore.”
She poked the needle into the paired fabric squares and pulled the threaded hair through, completing a couple of back stitches to secure it. Emily tried to copy with her own needle and nylon thread but tangled it. She groaned.
“It’s okay. Keep trying.”
Ava smiled politely as Emily untangled the string. When Emily was ready, Ava inserted her needle into the fabric partway to make the first stitch. She rocked it back and forth, in and out of the fabric a few times to complete three stitches, slowing her pace so Emily could follow.
“See how I pull the thread firmly, but not too hard? You don’t want to rumple the fabric.”
After completing the first pair of squares, Ava continued to sew the rest together, plucking more hair as needed.
“One Christmas morning, I snuck downstairs to peek at the presents. Under the tree were ten teddy bears, one for me and each of my siblings. Even though I wasn’t supposed to, I picked my favorite—a soft, white bear wearing the scarf. I hid the bear behind the couch so no one else would take it. Once I heard everyone wake up, I made Snowball, my little white dog, pose as a bear under the tree. No one suspected a thing.”
The pairs complete, Ava stitched them together in rows four squares across, and continued on to stitch each row together as she talked about the many adventures she took with her bear. She smoothed out her finished four-by-four patchwork square on the table. Emily set out her similar yet messy patchwork.
“Grandma, what was your teddy bear’s name?”
“What teddy bear?” Ava looked to Emily, unblinking.
“The one you were just talking about. You said the fabric was your bear’s scarf.”
“Hm. Are you sure I said that?” Ava stroked the sky-blue fabric lightly, frowning, her gaze drifting out the picture window to watch the waves roll to shore.
The room fell silent. Emily curled her toes under so tightly the soles of her feet cramped. She must have said the wrong thing.
***
Emily returned to her grandmother’s after school on days she didn’t have dance lessons. Her mother often sent her with a fresh-made casserole, leaving grandmother and grandchild alone, as they often were.
Emily would arrive to find her grandmother in the middle of organizing her collection of costume jewelry or adjusting the placement of her knick-knacks on a freshly dusted shelf. The house never needed tidying.
As the casserole warmed in the oven, Emily practiced her stitches to the calming flow of her grandmother’s stories. The work was slow, but Ava was persistent, pulling and knotting hairs together, staying on top of Emily to keep pace. The words swirled like an eddy from her lips.
Some of the stories Emily knew, but she listened anyway, as her mother told her to do.
Ava talked about the mountains of mashed potatoes she made for Emily when she was young, always with a crater of butter dripping down the sides.
“You would eat all the butter in one bite, then ask for more,” Ava teased.
“I always gave you more.”
Another day she talked about belting out Patsy Cline in the car on a hot day.
“Your grandfather always loved it when I sang to him.”
She traced her finger along a strip of denim taken from a pair of his jeans. As she attached it between two blocks of squares, she hummed an upbeat melody.
There were plenty of stories Emily didn’t know too.
As Ava’s stories grew more personal, as she plucked more hair from her head, as Emily’s stitches were still crooked and pulled too tight, Emily imagined the finished quilt as a tacky mess, childish and undeserving of her grandmother’s skill.
Emily plastered on a fake smile as a whirlpool churned in her stomach.
The day Emily’s mother broke the news to Ava that it was time for her to stop driving, time to sell her car, Emily and Ava watched *Grease* instead of sewing. For that day, Emily’s stomach settled.
Ava’s hair was gone.
***
From the kitchen cutout, Emily watched her grandmother hunch over the vibrant scattering of fabric on the folding table set near the recliners.
With the hair gone, Emily noticed pin-thin arms, deep-set wrinkles, an arthritic curve to her grandmother’s fingers.
Having lived an active life, her mind sharp and quick-witted as usual, Ava only now looked her age.
Emily bent forward over the sink like her grandmother, as if to spill her insides down the drain. She had finished washing the dishes several minutes ago, but she remained in the kitchen unable to move. She hadn’t had enough practice.
Ava swayed back and forth over the table like reeds at the shore, her hands bobbing rhythmically as if unsure of what to do. Instead of selecting her fabric, she slid over to look out the window.
The windy day had the ocean unsettled, reflecting gray, overcast skies.
*Remember for me.*
A lump formed in Emily’s throat. She swallowed, nearly gagging. There was no stopping what was to come. She couldn’t let her grandmother down.
Emily peeled herself from the kitchen sink, shuffled her sock-covered feet across the oak wood floor.
At the table, she handed purple velvet fabric to her grandmother.
“This will look nice, Grandma. It’s your favorite color.”
Ava stared unblinking at Emily, but when she eyed the fabric her eyes twinkled.
“That’s exactly what I was looking for.”
Ava patted her granddaughter’s shoulder.
“Thanks.”
The purple velvet had been cut in various angular shapes and sizes. Ava lined up two random pieces on top of a sheet of sewn squares and blocked the arrangement, moving with such purpose as if her lapse of focus had never happened.
“This is called a tack stitch,” Ava demonstrated with a bare needle. “See how I start with the sheet underneath and only come up through the fold on the appliqué? The stitch will be invisible.”
As Ava continued pinning the velvet into the shape of a flower, Emily practiced stitching appliqué with nylon thread and fabric scraps.
She tried the tack stitch, but kept poking the needle through all the fabric layers, missing the mark by a landslide from underneath.
Each time she tried, her grandmother encouraged her to try once more.
Again and again her fingers fumbled, the tips red and puffy, until she finally pushed the needle all the way through, making several erratic stitches, causing the scraps to bunch and buckle, the thread a tangled mess.
“I can’t,” Emily tossed her practice quilt on the table.
“You can,” Ava said.
“I’ll mess it up.”
“Then we start again.”
“But the story—”
“I have many to tell.”
“It’s too hard!”
Ava stopped pinning, looked up from her work. Her brow rumpled like the practice quilt on the table.
Emily pulled her knees to her chest. Her face flushed.
Ava cleared her throat.
“Let’s take a break. How about some hot chocolate?”
Emily straightened.
“No, Grandma. It’s okay. Let me—”
Ava hoisted herself up from the chair and flashed her granddaughter such a piercing look with her steely eyes that Emily shrunk back in her chair and waited quietly.
A few minutes later, the mug of hot chocolate warmed Emily’s hands, soothed her sore fingertips.
“How is it?” Ava asked.
Emily took a sip.
“It’s good. Thanks.”
“Good. Is everything okay?”
“What do you mean?”
Ava raised her eyebrows, eyed the crumpled practice quilt on the table.
“I had a bad day.”
“Oh?”
“I messed up the choreography at tryouts and didn’t make the dance team.”
“Oh.”
“I wish it never happened. I wish I could forget about it.”
Ava wrapped her hands around her granddaughter’s.
“Never wish away a single moment of your life.”
“Then why do you do it?” Emily asked.
“I’m not wishing anything away.”
Ava squeezed her hands around Emily’s.
“My memories will fade no matter what, either with my mind, or be gone when I die. But this way I become more than just an old woman. They’re all I have left—the good, the bad. Memories are all we carry with us at the end. And when I’m gone, they’ll no longer be mine. They’ll be yours.”
Ava let go of Emily’s hands, returned her focus to the quilt.
Emily took a long sip of her drink, wiped away the liquid beading above her lip with her sleeve.
“I’m sorry, Grandma. I can’t seem to do anything right today. I just wanted everyone to see how much I love dancing.”
“You get that from me. It’s a good thing I’ve still got my flexibility.”
Ava kicked off her slippers, leaned over her lap, and lined up the needle with the tip of her big toe.
Emily held the mug to her face, taking in the steam with slow breaths. She watched out of the corner of her eye.
Ava pushed the needle through a thin layer of skin at the tip of her own great toe.
Emily winced.
“Does it hurt?”
“At my age, everything hurts, and nothing hurts.”
As Ava pulled the needle through her skin and lifted it back to the table, beige thread unspooled from her toe.
“Did you know, I wanted to dance on Broadway? This velvet was from my first casting.”
“Really?”
Completing the first shape of the appliqué, Ava talked about the many shows she danced, the hard work, how she met someone.
“Grandpa?” Emily asked.
“Before your grandfather.”
“Oh.”
Emily sat forward in her chair.
Ava pulled on the thread for more slack. It swung around as she wriggled the shrinking nub of her toe.
“I’ll keep going if you keep practicing. Remember, you can do anything one step at a time.”
Finished with her hot chocolate, Emily resumed her practice on her scrap quilt.
Ava talked about Hugh, the accidental pregnancy, miscarriage, and subsequent abandonment by him.
“That’s awful.”
Emily showed her practice quilt to her grandmother.
Ava gave her an approving smile.
“As awful as the memory is, it’s part of me. It formed who I am. I never would have been able to afford running a dance school in New York City. But after the divorce and moving out here, it was doable.”
Emily chewed on her lip a moment before speaking.
“Not being on the dance team, I’ll have more time to practice in the studio.”
“That’s the spirit. You know, I still remember the first routine I did on stage. If my bones didn’t ache so much I’d show you.”
Ava finished her appliqué. She knotted the thread and leaned down to cut it from the source, slipping into quiet as she stroked the soft velvet with her fingertips.
“Maybe you can show me another day, Grandma.”
“Show you what dear?”
“The dance.”
“Dance?”
Ava looked to her feet.
One was no longer visible below the ankle.
“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t know any dances.”
Her gaze drifted out the window, but the sky was dark, the only proof the ocean was still outside was the distant roar of waves crashing to shore.
Emily dropped her chin to her chest, regretting, again, what she had said.
To her surprise, the finished appliqué she held on her lap wasn’t the disaster she’d expected.
***
Emily walked in to her grandmother singing along to Dolly Parton’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” The music blared through the house and out the open windows on this first hot day of summer.
Ava quieted when she saw Emily and turned toward the window, leglessly bobbing and swaying over the living room floor like the sailboat drifting along the bay in the distance.
It wasn’t the first time Ava hadn’t recognized Emily. Even though she usually came around, it still made Emily feel as if her chest was being pressed flat by an iron.
Her mother had told her not to cry in front of Ava, that she had to save it for the drive home, that her job was to learn the craft and enjoy their time together.
Emily focused on keeping her grandmother happy, as her own mother would do.
“Grandma, it’s me, Emily,” she shouted over the music.
Ava gave Emily a brief glance before turning away again.
Despite feeling hot and sweaty, weighted down, Emily did what she had to do.
After setting the casserole in the kitchen, she danced and twirled across the room, belting out the song until her grandmother clapped along. They both laughed.
“Oh, Emily!” Ava floated across the living room and wrapped her arms around her granddaughter.
“I knew it was you! You always snort like a little piggy when you laugh.”
“Grandma!” Emily groaned as she sank into the bone-thin hug.
“Have you got a boyfriend yet?”
“What?”
“Girlfriend?”
“Grandma, no!” Emily pulled away.
Together, they moved to the card table. Emily turned down the music.
“Why do you always ask me that?”
“When I was your age, I had boys dangling off my elbows.”
She flipped non-existent hair over her shoulder.
“I married one of them, you know.”
“Is this one about Grandpa?”
Emily took a seat.
“Yes.”
Ava hovered near the table and pulled out an ivory and cerulean stack of triangle-cut fabric.
“These were from our wedding. It was a winter wedding. Biggest snow storm you ever saw.”
She readied the fabric in a snowflake shape and stuck the needle through the flesh at her torso, pulling it away with thread.
Emily squeezed her eyes shut a moment. She couldn’t get used to the sight.
“Diego was always sweet on me in high school,” Ava said.
“After I divorced Hugh, Diego came by nearly every week changing lightbulbs, fixing cabinets and whatnot. He would do anything for me. We married and were happy.”
As Ava sewed the snowflake pattern, she talked about the group home she and Diego had managed before they had a baby. How Diego took on a trucking job after Emily’s mother was born, leaving Ava alone at home for weeks at a time.
“Sometimes life gives you something you don’t think you can handle. The secret is you can. You can handle anything.”
Ava stopped sewing and handed Emily the threaded needle. The thin piece of steel was hot from her grandmother’s hand.
Emily curled under her toes, the whirlpool returned, churned her stomach.
“I’ll mess it up.”
Emily’s voice was garbled. Ava took Emily’s hand in hers. Together they worked on the outer edges of the snowflake until the needle rocked back and forth effortlessly without Ava’s guiding hand.
The swirling in Emily’s stomach eased to a trickle.
Grandmother and granddaughter smiled.
Ava babbled along, the thread unspooling above her navel. Her yellow cardigan dangled in the air.
“When your grandfather had his trucking accident I thought it was over, that it would be too much. But I learned if I accepted it, if I just cared for him, changed his dressing every day, it would all be okay.
I learned not to fight what life gave me. Like my mother always said, ‘what will be will be.’”
Emily was so immersed in the story she lost focus and pricked her finger with the needle.
Blood beaded on blue chiffon like a minuscule bunch of balloons on the verge of slipping through fingers.
Emily sucked on her fingertip as she ran to get a Band-aid.
After bandaging her finger, Emily blotted the blood away with a towel.
“Leave it dear,” Ava said. “It’ll stain.”
Ava gently lifted Emily’s wrist away. She pressed her finger to the blood, smearing it across the surface.
“It’s no matter. Life is full of stains.”
***
Emily squeezed the needle so hard between her fingertips, they grew numb and pale.
She lined up the needle with her grandmother’s thumb, but she couldn’t seem to push it through.
Today was the day Emily took over.
The quilt was spread across the floor.
It was a vibrant mix of fabrics and shapes with angular flowers, flowing water, the shining sun.
Some areas were orderly and neat, others with stitches that veered off the path.
Scattered across were dots of blood.
The quilt was so large, Emily had to move around the plush carpet of the cozy living room like a snake in a too-small terrarium, twisting and contorting her body—an incomplete ouroboros.
Out of habit, Ava skirted the edge of the quilt as if fussing with it too, even though no feet rustled the edges, even though she was all arms, neck, and head.
She took Emily’s hand and, with it, pushed the needle through her thumb.
Thread unspooled from it.
“See? Not so hard.”
Ava turned to the fabric basket.
Emily let out a long breath as Ava handed her tiny, emerald green poplin squares.
“Oh, I remember this.”
“You wore it when you married Lawrence.”
“I did.”
Ava brushed a fabric square on her cheek before helping Emily to arrange the pieces as foliage for some flowers.
Once pinned, Emily stitched the appliqué.
“You know, I never knew love until I met Lawrence.”
Ava smiled.
“But you said you were happy with Grandpa.”
“I was until the day your grandfather died. Back then I didn’t really know love. You can’t possibly know it until you really feel it. I know it’s cliché, but Lawrence was like a piece of me that was missing.”
Emily arranged and pinned more green squares.
“How did you meet him again?”
“I was singing at the bar with my sister. Oh, stop a second. Your stitches are too far apart, see?”
Even with her thumb gone to thread, Ava was adept with her movements as she took out the stitches.
“There, now don’t do so many stitches at once. Take it slow. You’ve got years to go before you can be as fast as me. What was I saying?”
“How you met Lawrence.”
“Oh yes! He was at the bar. We went to lunch the next day.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Lawrence was lucky to have you.”
Emily worked slow and steady.
“I was the lucky one. I felt like the most beautiful person in the whole world when I was with him. Little old wrinkly me. I mean, no one looks good at my age.”
“That’s not true, Grandma. I think you’re beautiful.”
“Not as beautiful as you.”
Ava floated forward and planted a kiss on Emily’s cheek.
Having used the length of Ava’s arm, Emily knotted the thread, cut it, and rethreaded the needle from Ava’s other thumb.
“Lawrence’s family never thanked me for taking care of him. They thought that I was after his money, can you believe it? I mean, toward the end I was hand feeding him. And they did nothing. But, I didn’t mind. I loved him. It’s what you do for those you love, but it would have been nice if they had said thank you.”
“That’s terrible.”
“What will be will be.”
Once Emily finished the final seam, she cut and knotted the thread, and the top sheet was complete. Ava directed her in nesting and pressing the seams on the back.
Emily smoothed the teal backing fabric on the floor, which came from Ava’s bedsheets, and taped it carefully so the fabric was smooth. Next, she placed the batting on top and trimmed it to fit.
Lastly, she smoothed the quilt on top, pinning it through all three layers with safety pins every four inches.
Ava hardly had to direct Emily on what to do.
Gazing at her work, Emily felt weightless, buoyant as if she’d breached the surface of water.
“Next we quilt and cut the excess, then all that’s left is the binding.”
Ava was just a head and neck. The sight caused Emily to sink, her stomach to drop, the pride at her work dissolving to vapor.
Her grandmother was soon to be gone.
Emily’s nostrils burned as she resisted crying.
“Are you sure you can go on?”
“Don’t worry, there’s enough left of me in this ol’ noggin to last us awhile.”
***
Quilting came easily to Emily, despite the variety of seams she stitched around. Some straight, some curved, some orderly, some haphazard.
Ava was quieter than usual, but as the thread pulled from her throat she sang, a Patsy Cline tune.
Further up her neck, Ava’s voice faded to a whisper, “Oh I forgot how much I love to sing.”
“You used to dance too.”
Emily sniffled.
“Dance? How?”
“You had feet, down there.”
Emily pointed to the floor.
“I remember there was something there, but I don’t think it was feet.”
***
Emily searched for three whole minutes before she noticed a pair of rosy lips hovering at the open window.
She was glad her grandmother didn’t have the eyes to see her crumpled face.
Maybe Ava knew, maybe she could still see anyway.
Emily didn’t have the heart to ask.
Ava’s lips opened and closed like a fish in the sea.
With one final side of the quilt to bind, Emily readied the needle with trembling fingers.
She steadied her hand with the other before piercing her grandmother’s lips.
In the softest whisper Ava spoke, “Let me tell you one last thing. The greatest gift I have been given was sharing my story with you.”
Emily thrust the needle too hard and poked her finger.
She licked the blood away, held her finger between her lips, biting it, wishing to undo all the thread, to put her grandmother back together and hear the stories all over again.
Her vision blurred. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the water out, squeezing out more blood with her teeth.
She must not falter. She must not ruin this final lasting memory, but the muscles in her hands kept cramping, her fingers stiff, the tang of copper in her mouth.
Ava whispered in fragments, “One. Step. A. Time.”
Emily removed her finger from her mouth.
“What you do . for love.”
She fumbled. Her fingers felt thick like logs, but still she worked on the last binding.
“Tell stories.”
Emily’s vision cleared and Ava’s stories coursed through her fingers. Their shared love of dance, Emily’s failure intertwined with Ava’s loss. Threading her grandmother’s life into the fabric.
“Remember for me.”
As the needle neared the final stitches of the binding, as Ava’s lips were nothing more than a thin, rudimentary outline, she breathed, “What will be will be will be will be.”
Emily finished the back stitch, knotted the thread, and trimmed the excess.
She didn’t need to look up to know Ava’s lips were gone.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/11/threaded-lives/
