Text & Textile — 5

I join my MA supervisor at a restaurant close to the University. I submitted my master’s thesis a few weeks earlier. I give her the bouquet I bought to thank her for generously accompanying me during the three years of redaction, which earned her the comment from a tipsy colleague at the bar: “It’s your birthday ?” My director smiled politely without answering him. She warmly congratulates me on the deposit, takes news, questions me about this sewing course to which I registered. I’m almost thirty and I’ve never touched a sewing machine in my life. I tell her that we practice the straight stitch on an electronic industrial machine, the Cadillac of machines, apparently. Me, I’m especially afraid of sticking the needle in my finger. I often have my hand raised, I need more explanations and it doesn’t get much better with time. I am an expert in unsewing, I’m late on integrating the vocabulary — straight grain, bias, dart. My supervisor orders a starter, and two glasses of bubbles please. She pauses and says these words to me that will stay with me forever: “You have spent the last few years in school, you have to give yourself time to learn this new language. Trust the memory of the body.”

I still tame this letting go today.