Flawed Embroidery

Notes from the Prairie: Friday Bonus Post from "A World in a Grain of Sand"

Photo by Carol Van Klompenburg. Embroidery by Mary Addink

This is the third in a series of bonus posts from A World in a Grain of Sand. This week Monday was the second and can be found here. Today’s chapter is from Section 2: “Changes.”

Special Announcement for Pella-Area Readers
Pella’s The Work of Our Hands fair-trade store is having a drawing for two free copies of A World in a Grain of Sand on February 10. Stop in, mention you saw this drawing online in my column, and register!

All people who register at The Work of Our Hands for the book drawing but do not win will qualify for a 25% discount on the price from me. (I will email you after the February 10 drawing to check with you.)

Flawed Embroidery

Lifting a box of gift bags from a closet shelf, I uncover a rectangle of embroidered fabric. When framed in past years, it hung from a wall, a family room wall, I think. When we moved to this smaller home four years ago, I detached the frame and demoted the stitchery to a closet shelf.

A border, along with pearl-and-floss flowers, surrounds seven lines of words:

In
memory of
Craig Evan
Van Klompenburg
stillborn
on
Oct. 29, 1982

I pause. I remember back forty-two years.

The young doctor filling in for my normal physician removed his stethoscope from my huge abdomen and said, puzzled, “I can’t hear a heartbeat. Let’s do a Doppler ultrasound.” The Doppler could hear no heartbeat either.

The nurse doing the Doppler called my husband. He rushed over. We drove to Des Moines for another ultrasound (a picture this time) and a specialist. The specialist gently told us, “All indications are the baby has died and that you are in labor. You will probably deliver in the next twenty-four hours.”

We went home. We told our sons Chad and Mark their baby brother Craig had died within me.

Chad, age six, sat motionless in his chair and murmured, “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” as if not hearing the news would keep it from being true. Age three, Mark didn’t understand what had happened. We sat in quiet for a few minutes.

Then I emptied the dishwasher, vacuumed carpet, and sorted clutter, frantic to distract myself with something I could control. I craved order in the chaos that suddenly engulfed my life and plans.

That night in the delivery room I heard no newborn’s first cry, only the clank of delivery tools on a metal table.

My parents arrived the next day.

We held a private service at the funeral home, facing a tiny white casket draped with flowers.

In the days that followed, we mourned. Sometimes we wept. My husband cried as he took down the baby crib. I sobbed as I boxed the baby clothes. We wept together in bed through the long nights.

My parents stayed a week. My mother asked for household cleaning jobs.

A few weeks after they left, my mother sent us a package. I was reluctant to open it.

When I did, I discovered a hand-embroidered memorial to Craig. I was amazed. In the decades as her daughter, I had never before seen her do a single stitch of needlework. The border was beautiful and flawless. The hand-stitched lettering was legible, but uneven in places. I concluded she had purchased a kit which provided guidelines for the intricate border and flowers. But, of course, she had needed to stitch in the words without a guide.

I suspected the unevenness bothered her. Her handwriting was impeccable. It had been perfect on the letter she left on the dresser of the nursery when she and Dad had traveled home.

In her flawless handwriting, she had left me two pages of grieving instructions: “You need to cry more after Dad and I have left. You and Marlo must not let this loss drive you apart . . .”

I no longer remember the rest of her instructions in that letter. I read it, raged, and then grew more furious reading it the second time. I felt violated. I tore it up and threw it in the garbage.

Forgiving her was a long process.

You see, the letter followed decades of wounds as the daughter of a woman who lacked personal boundaries. She was incapable of recognizing where she ended and another person began. She experienced the lives of her children as if those lives were hers, even when we were adults.

Holding her handiwork, today, my anger with her shortcomings rises again for a moment.

Then I remember my own miscarried grandson, and recall the loss I felt. I picture my mother’s similar loss. I imagine her struggling to complete this needlework amid tears.

I think also of her pleasure in learning new words before her eventual dementia and death. I remember her notebooks of proverbs, recorded each time she read a maxim she especially liked. I didn’t learn about those notebooks until she thought they were lost. She had loaned them to a friend in a nursing home, and she was inconsolable after her friend misplaced them.

When her notebooks were found, I helped her convert them into a paperback book, Treasury of Gems, which she proudly sold or gave away to friends and relatives, sharing her viewpoints, this time in a non-invasive way.

Holding her flawed embroidery, I forgive her yet again for her letter of grief instructions. Peace returns.

I put her handiwork back on the shelf. Although I continue to downsize, I will not purge it. It has led me to forgive again. It no longer belongs on my walls, but I will not part with it today.

In Pella, A World in a Grain of Sand is available from Carol (carolvk13@gmail.com or Pella’s Curiosity Shop. It is also available on Amazon.

Carol Van Klompenburg is a writer living in Pella, Iowa. She has a BA in English and an MA in Theater Arts — and is available for reading performances of her work (carolvk13@gmail.com).

Amazon Book Review of A World in a Grain of Sand

Time and time again, Carol Van Klompenburg captivates readers with her unique vision of the world. She can draw you into the smallest detail, this time bringing life and perspective to often discarded items. In her latest tales, she travels short distances throughout her home and tells the stories of the items that she built her life around.

Carol transforms what may be viewed as just everyday household items, taking readers on a trip to places of yesteryear. Carol doesn’t miss details, and her stories often make me wonder what the things I surround myself with will tell about my life someday. Sarah Weber, Co-Editor
Sioux County Capital-Democrat