One summer during my high school years, Aunt Bernice offered me a job in her drapery shop. She had been a dressmaker until her work evolved into more lucrative window treatments. Then she bought the house next door to hers and converted it into a workshop/office. She and several employees covered fancy cornice boards and sewed custom drapes for those who could afford such luxuries.
I accepted my kindhearted aunt's offer. Considering that years later the art of sewing would, in a sense, claim my soul, I could not have been more suited to the job that had fallen out of the blue.
Aunt Bernice paid me a dollar an hour, a shocking wage compared to today's standards, but this was the late 1960s, and to a ragamuffin like me, forty dollars in cash at the end of a forty-hour week looked like a gold mine.
In the house where I worked, most of the rooms were outfitted with long wooden tables designed for laying out yards of chintz, measuring and cutting straight. I sat at a somewhat smaller table next to the kitchen with a thimble on my finger and a needle in my right hand, stitching white linings to mostly floor-length drapes.
I see images of Aunt Bernice providing lunch for me, tomatoes and green beans from her garden, and nothing is more satisfying than a drippy tomato sandwich with a side of fresh green beans. I also recall a moment when I was asked to perform a task outside of my normal duties.
Aunt Bernice said she wanted me to drive her car to Binswanger and pick up a piece of glass, a tabletop for a client. Then she handed me the keys to her station wagon.
At the time, I had little driving experience and to the best of my recollection hitched rides to work, mostly with my sister Lucy and brother-in-law John with whom I lived. Also, in that tender orphan phase of my life, my self-esteem had lost its steam and every ant hill looked like a mountain to climb. In my mind, I equated this simple task to driving to the airport, boarding a jet plane, flying to France and picking up a roll of lace.
My introverted demeanor forbade any expression of reluctance to carry out the task she gently conveyed to me. Those were the days of yes, sir and yes, ma'am, and I would never have revealed my fear or hesitation, even to my gracious and kindly aunt. So I took the keys, sat my ninety-five pound self in her great big tank of a station wagon and pulled onto Spring Garden Street, simultaneously feeling a little bit important for being sent on a mission and a whole lot terrified of wrecking my aunt's car.
I arrived at Binswanger Glass unscathed, went in and told the worker at the counter why I had come, at which time she advised me to back my car up to the loading dock. I shuffled back outside, sat down in the station wagon, and on pins and needles, turned that monstrosity around and backed it up.
Once the oversized piece of glass was nestled in the car, I drove precisely thirty-five miles per hour back to the house on Spring Garden Street and parked in the yard. I gave the keys back to Aunt Bernice, my heart still bouncing around in my chest.
Today, more than fifty years later, I look back on that experience as a defining moment. Aunt Bernice's confidence in me gave me confidence in myself, and I know that her intentions in giving me a job, or sending me on an errand, stretched far beyond the motions of my threading a needle or picking up a piece of glass.
