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Illustration by April Dela Noche Milne

Every now and then, I find my thoughts wandering so far that I start to feel disconnected from myself. It meandered and drifted away, as if my head suddenly believed that it had been a balloon full of helium.

This time, a work contract suddenly ended, my wedding was about to come, and "now somewhere in between", I began to feel...transcendent. When you are willing—even passionately—to join one of the most obvious attachments in society, it feels a bit ironic. Perhaps the prospect of connectivity has exacerbated the disconnect.

This feeling is familiar and far from pleasant. But if intermittent repression and expression of anxiety for decades has taught me anything, it is that handcrafting is an effective comfort for minds on the verge of liberation.

Something in the tactile world consistently repairs any wear and tear in the ethereal. It can be as simple as finishing old fabrics, or as simple as turning these fabrics into chuppah, a kind of Jewish wedding awning, for my own upcoming wedding.

Chuppah or something similar is a project that I have been loosely conceiving after getting a dense trash can from my late Bubbie fabric.

She sewed everything. Curtains, curtains runoff clothes, tea towels on clothes that no longer fit. She sews out of necessity and ritual and the spirit of survivors of the Eastern European war: this is what you do. You can do what you want. What you need, you also do.

Her antique Singer sewing machine is in my living room. The narrow drawer still contains the original spools, handmade pillow-shaped needles, and cloth scissors. These scissors have become dull due to years of use and discard. From time to time I opened each small drawer, holding something in my hand, imagined my Bubbie was doing the same thing, and then carefully put it back in place and closed the drawer, being careful not to disturb the time capsule.

I have a blue floral cardigan that used to be hers. When I put it on, I felt that I was calling her somehow and suddenly needed to ask myself to go to the nearest kosher restaurant to order a bowl of borscht or potato soup STAT, which made me at a loss.

Of course, logically, this is not always an option, so sometimes I just like to pay attention to how her sweater feels on my skin.

I want to know if she also noticed the sensation of it on her skin, and imagined that one day she would have a granddaughter who would know the exact feeling, this particular cardigan was on this specific part of her forearm slide? Will she buckle it all the way to the top or leave a pair? Does this blue match these pants? Is that the potato soup stain on the sleeve?

But even though my head continued to hover over my body, gently swinging in the wind, the pile of old fabric kept calling me over and over again.

What fabric is there! Faded flowers are mixed with gingham, paisley and geometric patterns. The sweet and stale smell of their past lives — in the kitchen, on the body, scattered on the plastic-coated sofa — radiated with each lift of the lid.

All of these pieces of cloth made me calm down and full of vitality. It is a kind of tonic, contacting different materials, letting my hand stroke each piece, so as to smooth out jagged and irregular shapes.

You can find the right wedding canopy almost anywhere. If you are really nervous, you can use old sheets. But I want to give new life to these works, just like my Bubbie before. I don't need to sew chuppah by myself. But I definitely need to sew my own chuppah.

You can do what you want. What you need, you also do.

Precision is not important. I have a vision. I drew my design inspiration from the fabric-for any experienced sewer, this is simply a nightmare. There is no pattern. Minimum measurement. In most cases, just focus on things and hope for the best.

But it makes me feel dizzy. It brings a desire clarity that I didn't even realize, adding form and function to things that have always been difficult to determine.

Knowing that these same works have been held and manipulated by my Bubbie's firm hands, it adds a layer of satisfaction to everything. I no longer feel isolated from the world. I'm doing important work, splicing myself, my family, and my blood.

The sparkle of her cheekbones, delicate contours and chestnut hair; her eyes are deep, deeper than anyone would like to see, the black pool now burns so vividly. She sews on me. I brought her back to life.

She brought me back to life.

In the worn and faded print, the flowers bloom brighter. Linear patterns linger in the range where they flow. The eyes can follow them forever. Each piece is pieced together, and it always seems to know its meaning: heart-wrenching beauty, tumbling in the wind, firmly tied to four birch pillars.

A gentle parachute guided my head back to its body.

Bev Spritzer lives in Toronto.

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