One day you'll learn to discern its true meaning

Original post from 2009.

CB and I had a casual conversation about our mothers before her buzzed nap turned into a drunken coma earlier tonight. CB looked on as I refastened the button onto my latest thrift store find with the sewing kit her mother had given her three years ago. My difficulty with the simplest domestic task triggered her to inquire whether or not my mother had taught me how to sew. She did, actually, if you were wondering. However, my time at the sewing machine didn't encompass much beyond tote bags, skirts and coin purses. Broken needles and broken faith. The whirring frustrations of my rebellious youth and the snags of our mother-daughter relationship.

I examined the newly fastened button on my skirt and noticed how crooked of a job I'd done. Immediately I thought of my mom's adept and elegant hands. While CB and I will never be able to sew a button on as efficiently as our mothers, I'm afraid the dissimilarities are beginning to end just there. Much to our dismay, CB and I are both morphing into our mothers. Personally, if this really is the case, then I think it is equal parts amazing and awful. Is it possible that there is amazing potential lurking beneath these clumsy hands? Or awful that we all eventually realize that our parents are human, too?