sewing lessons

My mother, who is flying from California to New York to hang her homemade curtains in my new apartment, just emailed me to ask if I have a sewing machine. It's hard to explain to a woman who's spent most her adult life in houses filled with such things that this apartment- rather, my room in this apartment- fits one toothbrush, one chair, one queen sized bed, one bookshelf, one 32" TV, one sofa, and zero sewing machines. Harder still is to explain this feeling of luxury.

When I arrived in New York in 2003, I bought a journal. "I can't afford this," I wrote on the first page; then took it to the register and paid. My journal lived on the ledge of the window with no view in the East Village apartment I shared with a 34-year-old man who smoked weed and sold Jerry Garcia posters. The room fit a twin-sized bed, a rug, and a 15" TV wedged into the corner of the small closet with the bifolding door that grazed the bed when opened. Cramped, poor, and alone, I was happy.

The fabric of this city is joined together by its fine strands of contradiction: passengers pressed into silent subway conversation, homeless men who take money but not food, students who sell sex for law school, women who dream big in small beds. My mother emailed me today to ask if I have a sewing machine. No, I thought, but I have thread.