Mike's Two Cents Worth

My father was a tailor.  My grandmother taught him how to sew and while he was in the navy he made a few extra dollars altering the uniforms of fellow sailors aboard an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific.  A child of the depression he wanted to learn a trade that would keep him employed even in hard times.  After apprenticing under old-world craftsmen in Oklahoma City then moving up to positions as “head tailor” first in a small menswear store in Enid Oklahoma and then a large store in Wichita Kansas, he began his own manufacturing business in the basement of our home… when I was about ten years old.  His business prospered and by the time I was a teen his factory was manufacturing cut-and-sewn items for the government – things like, coveralls for pilots, bathrobes for the V.A., grenade carrier vests for the Army.

My story has to do with a contract he received from the Air Force to design a parka to be worn in extremely cold weather.  A garment that had more pieces than a twenty dollar jigsaw puzzle, with a lining and insulated inner lining, a fur-lined hood, elastic inner cuffs, patch pockets, slash pockets with zippers, and one of those military style pockets on a sleeve, for pencils and stuff.  It was an amazingly complicated piece of sewing.

As I had done countless hours in my youth I was sitting beside dad’s machine watching as he sewed together the parka.  I was amazed that he could keep it all straight.  He was literally surrounded by parka parts, bent forward in concentration as his powerful hands guided fabric under the presser foot of the sewing machine.  I asked my dad “How do you know where you are?  How do you keep it all straight?”  I’ll never forget his simple reply, one that applies to more in life than just piecing together a garment.  Without looking up he smiled and said “All I have to think about is the part that’s under the needle.”

I’ve reflected on that piece of wisdom when my life has been complicated or the future uncertain.  I’ve reminded myself that all I have to worry about is the present – “the part that’s under the needle.”