Yesterday, I made a gift for a special young lady with an encroaching birthday. This is Amy's "No-Cash Wallet," and it was a joy to sew up. I made it from the front of a button-down shirt, though you can't really tell that from the picture.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1xhuOFcAtndI6WgM9lyJpy1bfJngi5hNh8SkZDhLR6DL8nAkJDVpN8p1cbUy9EOhAz6DcqkWJIIrnLE1oRn33SGLVg-VNgVKSJKrG_QUC9ZzN_-3BWzpZvVOvrljNAMVxBIEnyrMJ9A/s400/IMG_6424.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSO8kWbwDEH8_ApgIwnSKqK3eABuN6iueNSH1RKFIFx2DiislrC4wNPhjWw9GqaH9piw0judACI2DQB7WGAK9A0op5wyzTVJwvb24uJ2H_FaUt7hCgaHZm4P68-DiU3A_vEA36B3sYjPc/s400/n13803100_32978628_1403.jpg)
I remember the day he told me he and his wife were expecting. How happy and blessed he seemed. I babysat for a three-month-old Emily, walking around and around their creaky townhouse with a sleeping infant on my shoulder. He moved away; I visited. We chatted on instant messenger while I was in college. Instead of high school cliques and cafeteria lunchtime, now he helped me navigate the treacherous waters of Politics 324 and my first boyfriend.
Relaying the news of his passing on to me was maybe the hardest thing my mom ever had to do. Like an atomic bomb dropped in the middle of my junior year, my first boyfriend, and Politics 324, a phone call from home, late at night. A car accident. With life and its conventions whirling around me, I could hardly pause to be sad.
All the hurt is buried now, mostly. It's been nearly seven years. There's times when I imagine a conversation we might have, and what wisdom he'd offer me now, on the loaded topic of marriage. There's times when I grieve that he never got to meet my husband, but I can't go too far down that path before all the other "never got to's" come pouring in. Keeping in touch, keeping his wife and daughter close in my thoughts, is the most I can do. And making things, taking small stitches one at a time, sewing a button on a birthday present for his daughter is the best enactment of my love.
4 comments:
Sweet, sweet, sweet!
A lovely tribute to an extraordinarily lovely person. I've read it twice, 3 hours apart, and both times cried. I hope Mary (his wife) reads this.
MOM
Thanks, mom. :)
what a beautiful remembrance. thank you. i'm sure emily will love it.
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