Mom got the first inkling of Parkinson’s when she fell into the flower garden for no reason back in the summer of 2003. It turned out there was a reason but the knowing of reason took a long time — well over a decade — because Parkinson’s is notoriously resistant to diagnosis. Meanwhile there was no argument over how her sewing skills were unraveling, reversing themselves, traveling backwards through all of the mountains and mountains of bonnets & booties, hooded baby bath towels, bibs, onesies, and diaper bags. Mom was prolific. Being near fabric and yarn seemed to answer something in her. Turn something on.

For the house there were aprons, pot holders, placemats, napkins, table runners, table cloths, bed skirts, pillowcases, sheets, bath mats, bedspreads, curtains, wall hangings, decorations, banners, and braided rugs.

To hold things came the custom laptop cases, brief cases, tampon holders, wallets, eye glass cases, change purses, hanging shoe bags, regular purses, fanny packs, handbags, and a singular 3 ft. x 3 ft. baseball card portfolio. 

To cover and adorn the body there were mittens, gloves, neck warmers, hats, head bands and head wraps, shawls, ponchos, jackets, coats, socks, pants, sweaters, shirts, belts, dickies, I’m sure there were dickies, tutus, leggings, belly shirts, and something she called bottom huggers — exactly as it sounds, a decorative wrap for the bottom as a necktie is for the neck — made from cut-up sweaters and invented for the little girls in the family, thankfully not the 50+ year-old ones. At the peak of her profusion were crop tops for boys as she reached to find unbroken ground for textiles and tools…some new geography to explore with a knitting needle, a crochet hook, a sewing machine and, underpinning it all, the plain old toothpick of a hand-sewing needle. 

Whether by the week or by the year, at every family gathering large or small, Mom would come with a huge, freshly manufactured box of goods. Nothing seemed to feed her more than for all who were present to drop to the floor and paw through the pile, carefully fingering our way through the wild assortment of color combinations and patterns, wildness being her specialty, her wildness our delight. She combined color and pattern in unconfined, wacky ways, ways that the rest of us couldn’t see, but it worked. 

Some summers at our annual family reunions, Mom would arrive with a product theme, the same article for everyone. After the pawing and pairing to the individual, we would all line up for a photo, a family stitched together more securely by that year’s feature. One year crocheted bootie slippers. Another year Elmer Fudd hats with earflaps. Who knew what was coming, what idea would have taken possession. Mom was something of a wild card, that much you could count on.

But Parkinson’s was undo-ing all that, her own unraveling mirrored in the days and days she now spent un-knitting mittens with the thumbs mistakenly attached to the wrong side or sweaters with neck holes that would only go over the heads of mice. Her days were now spent unmaking all the projects that had strayed from the path and which now had her pulling thread and yarn out faster than she could re-create. Her work took on a crude, child-like quality, briefly passing through a whimsical folk-art sort of period before a rapid descent, moving from small, careful stitches to big stitches and then finally duct tape, glue, staples… whatever she could employ to bring pieces of something together. She would find ways to make until she could make no more.

She did this steadfastly, stubbornly, now presenting boxes of misshapen pieces.

Did she know, I wondered?

Once, as she discussed with me the red and green stop-and-go mittens she’d made for Zoe and Leo which I would be taking over later that morning — Leo’s mittens cat-paw size and Zoe’s with the thumbs much higher than where thumbs go — she looked at me from her wheelchair and simply said, “I would do better if I could.”

Something about that clear-eyed, unbidden disclosure stopped me in my tracks as I stood witness to the wild, raw drive to create.

There was elemental life-force in those crooked mittens, an irrepressible creativity insisting upon expression, no matter the shape it took.

Erliene Clayton
November 17, 1933 – December 1, 2024