Sewing a Button

Sewing a Button

Dr dr dr! Dr dr dr dr! The MAX operator warns us that we will be hit if we attempt to run across the rails. Someone will still attempt to run across the street before the Light Rail takes off.

The sun is out today, and downtown is buzzing. I am walking up SW Morrison with my satchel strapped across my torso. I’m surprised at how much heavier a pair of chinos makes it feel. My destination is an alteration and tailor shop located at 1222 SW Morrison. It sits across the street from First Presbyterian Church inside a suite in a mid-century modern building that was designed by Pietro Belluschi.

“One minute, sir!” the seamstress tells me after I walk through the door. I wait as she finishes pinning up the hem on the legs of a woman’s jumpsuit. “How can I help you?” she asks. I pull my chinos out of my bag.

“The button fell off, and I was wondering if you could sew one back on?” I leave out the detail that I was standing at the urinal in my office bathroom when the button popped off and was lost forever.

“Wait right here.”

The seamstress takes my pants to the back. She is interrupted by a man who comes through the door. He looks to be in his forties and is classically handsome. He gives the seamstress a bad time for calling him “sir.” They discuss his white polo shirt. He’s particular about his clothing.

The seamstress disappears again. She comes back a few minutes later with my grey chinos. “It has a new button.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! Have a good day.” She turns around.

“Thank you so much!” I head out the door tucking my pants back into my bag. I wanted to pay her, but I’m sure that to her it was worth hardly any time and money. How much does a button even cost?

I do not know how to sew a button back on a pair of pants otherwise I would’ve tried to do it myself. I can’t help but think she felt bad for me. This poor white boy doesn’t have a mother who can sew a button back on his pants for him. I do have a mother who can sew a button back on my pants for me, but she is in Bakersfield.

My mother never taught me how to sew button, because she becomes very impatient and frustrated when she has to sew. She says she is not good at sewing. Nonna did her best to teach my mother to sew, but Nonna was also very impatient and frustrated by it.

In the 1960’s, Mrs. Giulia Fanucchi gave all the Italian girls in Bakersfield sewing lessons. When I say all the Italian girls in Bakersfield were given lessons, I mean all the Italian girls in Bakersfield except for my mother. “Maria is going to college. She doesn’t need to learn how to sew,” is what Mrs. Giulia Fanucchi would tell my mother & Nonna and all the other Italian mothers & girls.

My mother did go to college as Nonna and Nonno had always told her she would, and she was the first Italian-American girl in Bakersfield to do it. However, the price she paid was never learning how to properly sew under the tutelage of Mrs. Giulia Fanucchi.

As boys, my mother taught my brother and me how to properly complete every domestic chore. She did not want us growing up to be helpless thirty-five year old bachelors like Zio. She taught us how to cook, do dishes, sweep, mop, fold handkerchiefs, iron, and clean windows — but she did not teach us to sew. Every time she had to put a button back on one of our shirts or hem up pair of pants, instead of sewing lessons we heard the story of Mrs. Giulia Fanucchi.

Mrs. Giulia Fanucchi is the reason why today I rely on the kindness of middle-aged Vietnamese women to stich buttons back on my chinos.