Then she stopped.
We looked at each other.
Grandma would have hated us hovering.
So Mom sighed.
“Fine.”
Lily took off laughing.
Later, after everyone went home, I sat in the garden with the sewing box beside me.
At the bottom, under the dresses, I found something I had somehow missed.
A tiny scrap of cream fabric.
On it, Grandma had practiced the green leaf pattern she’d eventually stitched onto Lily’s hem.
The first leaf was crooked.
The second was worse.
The third was almost right.
I stared at it for a long time.
Grandma had been sewing for nearly 90 years when she made that dress.
And still, apparently, she practiced first.
I framed that scrap too.
Because I’d spent most of my life thinking Grandma knew how to do everything without being afraid or uncertain.
She didn’t.
She simply kept going until the next stitch held.
I think
