If you want to start your mornings well, turn on Swedish Radio. They speak beautifully and singing and sometimes some of my favorite people speak. Like this morning when Tomas Sjödin spoke. He’s a pastor in Gothenburg and author of several books(find my podcast and article with him right over here on one of the other pages on the website)
He and Lotta have three sons. Two of them are dead, but as I talked to him about in the podcast, they live with them on a daily basis, as we do with our son. Swedish as they are, they have rag rugs in their house. We also have it in the kitchen. A gift from my sister that we see and stand on every single day.
This morning on the radio (listen to the segment here) Tomas talked about the rug he has written about before, which lies under their little fika table in the kitchen. A rug he and Lotta had woven from clothes their two sons had worn. Now it was worn out. But can you throw it out? No, you can’t. They had it repaired and when they opened the package with the freshly washed and rewoven rug, they had to stand side by side and see that it was now finer than ever.
I recognized the deed. We all wear Frederik’s clothes. Me in his sweatshirt, his father in his polo shirts, his brothers especially in their sportswear. And I’m getting ready for a patchwork summer dress made from his and his brothers’ plaid shirts. Yes, the old shirts must be restored to honor and dignity.
When I do this, sewing and using inherited clothes, I do what women have done for centuries. Not only do we get the best out of it, we also work with our grief at the same time. We carry the dead with us, carrying memories and grief at the same time.
Suzanne Brøgger writes about the same in her upcoming book, a collection of essays about artists, all hanging on the walls of the literature bar BRØG. It can be ordered from your bookseller. Or you can order a signed copy here.
“I know the feeling. I sewed a pillow from my mother’s candy-striped silk dress. Also from a purple cheongsam dress with blue dragons. I cut my grandmother’s coral red, pleated Chanel dress to combine it with a black leather jacket.”
It’s as if she is sewing herself a life dress of small texts with thoughts on artists as diverse as Agnes Henningsen and Villy Sørensen, Leonora Carrington, Virginia Woolf, Astrid Lindgren – and others like Donna Haraway that I didn’t know beforehand. The idea that we pick up words and thoughts from others and weave them into our own pattern is something I’m familiar with, but while I’m moving old clothes around, I know that it may not be considered intellectual to stick to this feminine form of historical pattern drawing or grief processing, but I would say that there is an undercurrent (!) of wisdom in what I do.
A wisdom that benefits not only women, but everyone, but that is driven by women and therefore has not been appreciated enough. This sub-thread is about sewing together, about connecting the ages and always bringing the old up in time and respecting the circle of life. Exactly what the planet is most comfortable with.
Read more in the latest edition of my newsletter, where there is also a complete overview of the spring and early summer courses and retreats.
