Measuring Tape and Tape Measures

My mother has been dead for 36 years, but I got a sudden flash of her this weekend as my husband asked me to measure a board for our roofing project.  I think it was the tape measure that got me thinking of Ma.  And how she taught me to sew.

I was up on the roof of our new addition, nailing black paper and shingles and metal flashing, making a mess with roofing tar, trying not to drop things off the edge or tumble off myself. 

I write these columns about building as if I were some master carpenter, but I am basically the crew to my husband the designer and builder.  But in over 30 years of marriage I have learned some basic skills in hammering and sawing and nailing.  I can think of five different roofing jobs I have done on various additions and outbuildings.  I learned wiring this past year and installed the plugs in our new addition.  Some of this I learned by observing other builders.  Or reading the directions.  Also, my husband is a good and patient teacher.

When we first got together I sort of knew how to hammer, I think from my mother, just around the house repair jobs.  And I knew how to saw wood, from firewood jobs we had done as kids.  But I had never sat down and made anything, a box or a go-cart or even shelves. 

But I did know how to sew.  I remember my mother teaching me; how you figure out what you want to make, chose the fabric, measure it with measuring tape, cut it to the lengths and shapes you want, pin the pieces together.  Then you put it in the sewing machine, or maybe you sew it by hand.  How to thread a needle.  When you’re done, when you have attached the pieces together, you have created something new and nice.  Maybe a few bent pins or badly aligned seams, but it’s probably ok, and you can always rip it out and try again. 

So in my 30’s I started learning about building with Ron, about different kinds of hammers and drill bits and grabber nails and saber saws and staple guns and the difference between pine and redwood and cedar and plywood.  Early on in my building education I said to him, “This reminds me of sewing with my mother.  We select the materials, measure them, cut and attach.  Just different tools and different ways to attach one thing to another.  Building a house is not that different from making a dress.”

And of course, as I’ve said in this column on several occasions before, a house and a dress both need to be strong, useful and beautiful (firmitas, utilitas, venustas.) You want even the most beautiful dress to stay in one piece, and for the zipper to work. 

One of the first construction projects Ron and I did together was building a flight of stairs, to make it easier to get to what was then Ron’s rough bachelor-built cabin.  We were tired of climbing up to the house on a zig zag path dug out of the hillside.   It was our impending wedding at this house that finally motivated us, so our guests, including my 84 year old grandmother, could get there more easily and safely.   

Looking back it seems crazy to build a flight of stairs in the last few weeks before a wedding.  But at the time it was sort of comforting, as we waited for the big day, to have a tangible job to do, and to have a very tangible result to show for it.  I could look at that flight of stairs and say with certainty - I built that!

Maybe I was comparing our marriage to a building project, that we would be building a life together, hoping to build a family.  And like the stairs, there were things    I wasn’t sure of-  what to do to make the relationship stronger, how to help it last a long time.

Ron did the design and the measuring and cutting the boards and I did the nailing.   I was doing an ok job, but not great. Nails would get bent over and I had to wrestle them out and try again. You have to build stairs carefully; to be safe, each step should have the same size rise and tread.

And my mind turned then to my mother as well.  But these thoughts were more immediate and sad.  She had just died three months earlier. I was both happy to be married and sad that she wouldn’t be there for the wedding.  Long ill, we both knew she would probably not be there, and she had urged us to plan the day anyway.  I wonder sometimes, if she had been well, would she have made my dress?  Or would she have helped build the stairs?  That’s more likely actually.  Sure, she taught me to sew, but she was more of an outdoors person, sawed firewood, shoveled snow, hiked and explored. 

So as I measured that board on the roof this week I remembered my mother’s cloth measuring tape that lived in her sewing box by the Singer sewing machine.  I remembered her gentle hands showing me how to push the needle without poking myself, how to thread the bobbin, how to let the sewing machine take the fabric, don’t push it, don’t force it.  I remembered what a patient teacher she was, and how she showed me how to correct mistakes and just start all over again. 

I thought of how she built me, and how, in my building, I was remembering her.  Thanks Ma.

Copyright © 2015 Deborah Streeter