That Darn Sewing Machine and other Packratasia


Before my follicles all migrated South for the winter and never returned. Before there was Big Lost Jr. and Little Lost Jr. Long before Mr. and Mrs. Lost said “I do” in the presence of a 100+ of their relatives and closest friends – many of whom do still speak to us –it was there. No, I’m not talking about student loan debt, or a collection of Styx and Lynyrd Skynyrd L.P.s. They’re still there, too, hiding in their melon-crate carrying cases, relics of an audio time past. At least they were taken out of their cardboard and paper sleeves frequently, and made to provide hours of aural pleasure. Nope, this is about a certain Singer Sewing Machine.

Mrs. Lost, when she was still a Miss, was sent a-packin’ off to college in the Big City, with the Singer in tow. It was a gift from Mother-in-Lost, a well intended gadget that had outlived its usefulness even in the Ray-gun years, given nevertheless in the hope that it would be oft used to hem, stitch, create and alter a future brimming with promise.

In reality, I’m not sure the cover has ever come off the thing. Mrs. Lost assures me she’s going to use it. Someday. When she gets around to it. But it has to get that bobbin thing fixed first. AHA! A clue, for how could she know the bobbin was broken if the cover had never come off? A breatkthrough-and-a-half, to be sure.

In the meantime, Ol’ Singer has been the largest and the bulkiest of dust-gathering paperweights, and has made many a move - first across Big City three times, then further South and around our current base of operations on the four moves for a total of seven relocations, all without a single stitch sewn.

Each year at this approximate time, Mrs. Lost sets about gathering up the stuff that is no longer fitting – mainly that means kid clothes, but sometimes, well, there’s other stuff. And each year for the last several, the Singer is mentioned as a candidate for relocation to Camp Goodwill, and each year there is a petulant “I’m going to use it someday.” This year was different. This year’s response was a thinly-disguised,-but-exasperated, “Okay, okay, we can ship it out if you want.” When the big day arrived, we pulled up to the back gate of Camp Goodwill, ready to greet the gatekeeper with bags of too small t-shirts, too-boring books, and – I hoped, one ancient Singer. See, with this brace on my leg (which comes off in a few more weeks), Mrs. Lost won’t permit heavy lifting. Needless to say, when the books and the clothes and the other stuff came out the trunk beheld . . . nothing. Singer had survived the cut to languish another year in its favorite spot on the closet floor. Somehow I sense it is laughing at me. Or perhaps its merely the movement of the not-really-broken bobbin, mocking me in its own triumphant way. At this rate, I’ll never get rid of that unicycle that’s been hanging in the garage here for nearly a decade, and which has made as many moves as that old Sewing machine has as well. This must mean that my baseball cards are safe, and well, that’s something, I suppose.