The Gingher Scissor

The portrait is blurry yet I can feel it pressed upon my template of parenting. Sometimes I can remember vividly and others I sit and create stories of butterflies with legs wearing a business suit. Distancing myself through pain was my teacher and observing distraction was hers as I now see her with the scissors that have been passed from her mother and grandmother. The sound of cutting was gentle and precise,carefully measured "so we do not waste." Patterns of lily pads dance in my head while I hear the "putt" "putt" under the small lamp so she can be alone. Never watching the process only receiving the instruction to be happy and thankful as I would be the prettiest princess of them all. With no worry, no thought , no teaching and hopefully no scissor to be passed down. As I sit here years after the sewing has passed, the scissors have been replaced with generic ones that only rape my childhood memory, I am filled with the portrait of a mother who was sad and lost yet with a simple pattern and grandmother's scissors she could create a dream for her children. My pattern today is not pretty nor perfected by the diligence of distractions. It has holes that my children have punched through when they are angry, red marker dots when they are creative and small shreds when they are proud. I hold idle that I do not share those difficult patterns she stared at daily but wonder how much of the portrait they will see of me , of their grandmother , the scissors. She has left the generational scissors that has cut many beautiful, complicated patterns and displayed many wounds from working late. Today I see an old mother who no longer holds those same scissors because her hands ache and her memory is lost somewhere in the best fashion of 54 where she , her, and I were/are the "perfect "mother.