My Mothers' Hands

My Mothers’ Hands
Order of Interbeing member Carole Moore
explores the deep connection she shares
with her mothers through sewing
and expresses her gratitude to them.

Thầy teaches us that our ancestors are in every cell
of our bodies. There is a thread running through
us, generation after generation, and into future
generations. Thầy teaches me that my ancestors
are in me.
At fifteen years old, in 1942, my mum left home
to work in a factory, where she began to learn the
dressmaking and tailoring skills she was to use
throughout her life.
Breathing in, I see my mother suffering as
a child.
She started to teach dressmaking in the evenings and then trained as a teacher in the 1970s.
She taught dressmaking in secondary schools
until she retired.
Breathing out, I smile to my mother.
My mother made my sister and me clothes
during our childhood and taught us many sewing
skills as we grew up. We learnt to make patchwork
cloth, which we turned into long, flowing skirts; we
tie-dyed T-shirts; we learnt to embroider and knit,
and we learnt dressmaking.
When we were in our teens, our parents went
on holiday and left us alone. Instead of having wild
parties, we turned the living room into a sewing
room and spent the week making clothes. I cut
up an old mock fur coat that had belonged to my
grandmother and made a new coat for myself,
while my sister made a velvet patchwork dress. We
cleared up completely before our parents’ return.
Recently, I started sewing again and decided
to make a pair of trousers. I chose a beginner’s
pattern and carefully cut out the jade green linen,
then started on the pockets. I struggled when the
pieces didn’t fit together, but I couldn’t believe that
I was unable to do it. Silently, I asked my mother
for help. A little while later, a voice in my head said,
“The pattern is wrong.” No, I said, how can the pattern be wrong? Trust the pattern. So on I went and
managed somehow to fit the pocket.
In the middle of the night, I thought I would
look on the Internet for feedback on the pattern.
Yes, there was an error in numbering on the paper
pattern:
Pocket linings AB incorrectly numbered.
5 is 6 on the pattern.
The larger of the pieces is referred to as 5 in
the instructions.
Piece 7 (pocket facing) is attached to piece 6
(smaller of the two pocket pieces) then sewn to
piece 5.
The pocket had been joined incorrectly. My
mother was right. Later, I was asked by the pattern
to make eyelets or buttonholes for the ties on the
Like the sewing box filled with her things,
my mother is in me, in every cell of my body.

trousers. Again my mum said to simplify; use the
most straightforward way. So I did. No eyelets or
buttonholes, just elastic and a very neat waistband.
As I stitched, I realised that the thread I was
using was from my mum’s sewing box, a rich
jade green. She had made sewing boxes for both
myself and my sister. Mine was made from a rich
turquoise-patterned satin and lined in deep red. It
was filled with scissors, buttons, needles, pins, and
thread.
The buttons varied in size and shape. Many
were large black buttons, but there were colourful
ones, too: Victorian painted ones, small motherof-pearl buttons, and I remember one that looked
like a piece of black and white striped liquorice.
The skills I was using were the skills she taught
to me as a child, and they were being used again
now that I was much older.
Breathing in, I am sewing with my
mother’s hands.
Breathing out, I smile to my mother.
Like the sewing box filled with her things,
my mother is in me, in every cell of my body. The
buttons, the pins, the needles, even the scissors.
There is a thread running through me. I realise that
this connection is not just in the skills that have
been passed on, but in my feelings, emotions, and
the seeds deep within me. Sometimes I wonder
where that feeling came from, and then I find a
small mother-of-pearl button in my sewing box.
My mother died on the 27th of January, 2015.
The thread that connects me to her is also the
thread that connects me to all my ancestors and
to the cosmos.
I was adopted, which complicates things for
me. I know very little about my birth mother and
I have no sewing box from her; I just have a few
stray buttons, a few photos, a few stories, and an
invisible thread which connects us.
Breathing in, I touch my mother’s hands.
Breathing out, I smile to my mother’s hands.
Another sewing box that I inherited was from
my mother-in-law. Using her threads connects us:
old threads on wooden spools and many, many
more buttons.
Buttons and attachments.
Breathing in, I smile; so many buttons.
Breathing out, I smile to the buttons.
Breathing in, I stitch.
Breathing out, I stitch.
Breathing.
Stitching.
Carole Moore, True Deep Loving-Kindness (pronouns
she/her), is a retired teacher and facilitates at the Sea
of Calm Sangha in Kent, England, co-facilitates local
Days of Mindfulness, and practises with Plum Village UK
Sanghas online.

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