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How to “!read the Needle”

by Diya Mathur

 If we’re being honest, it was just another one 
of my phases. Last year it was embroidering, and 
this year it was thri! "ipping. I had spent a couple 
of hours a few mornings ago endlessly watching 
YouTube videos about how to upcycle clothing. As 
an environmentally-conscious-lover-of-fashion, I 
wanted to learn to do the same and called my mother 
on the phone asking if she could teach me how to use 
a sewing machine. She excitedly agreed and arranged 
boxes of thread and spare cloth on the kitchen table, 
waiting, days before my arrival.
 Days passed and my internship ended. I returned 
home to the sewing machine and my eager mother. 
She soon began her tutorial, explaining the purpose 
of each of the machine’s knobs, how to change the 
patterns of stitching, and how to overcome the 
common issues I was bound to encounter. As I sat 
next to her, trying to internalize everything she was 
saying, I watched her maneuver the machine like a 
retired athlete—familiar, yet out-of-practice. She 
continued to maneuver the machine for a few more 
minutes while I patiently observed.
 “And now, we can thread the needle.”
 While this was a seemingly simple task in this 
more intricate operation, I watched her eyes blink 
away the excitedness into realms of frustration. 
Her Parkinson’s diagnosis had once again made an 
uncomplicated action become tedious, once again 
taken away the simplicity of her happiness. I o#ered 
to take over, but she refused my help, determined that 
she could prove herself wrong. But we both knew it 
wasn’t just her tremoring hands stopping her. It was 
her aging eyes, her blurry vision, and her reduced 
hand-eye coordination—a mosaic of the side e#ects 
of time and her medications. She struggled a while 
longer before soon accepting the inevitable outcome. 
Sighing, she handed me the thread and needle as she 
continued on with her tutorial.

…

 We received her diagnosis August 31st, 2018, the 
beginning of my sophomore year of college. It came 
with little surprise, since we had all suspected it, but 

the o$cial title of the disorder crystallized all of her 
symptoms, making them feel more real than before. 
Knowing the prognosis, I could no longer brush o# 
her newest twitch or latest limp as temporary. %is 
time, this diagnosis, was anything but temporary. 
Each new tremor, compounded by the last, added to 
the declaration that she was o$cially on the decline. 
 It made the 165 miles apart from her feel even 
further. 

…

 She calls me every couple of days while I’m 
away at college. I put her voice on speaker phone 
as she recounts her day’s pain levels and walking 
patterns. I quietly listen, while folding my laundry 
or responding to some emails, never forgetting that 
I can never truly see her misery through the phone. 
She spends &ve minutes or so explaining her day, 
talking about her coworkers and interactions with 
her nursing home patients, before concluding with 
something along the lines of, “Today, my tremors 
were manageable. I was able to walk for most of the 
day normally without too much pain, but yesterday 
was better.” %is is always my cue to return to the 
present. I know to remind her that today was just 
as good as yesterday, that her friends encounter 
struggles that they may not tell her about, and that 
if nothing else matters, she is a wonderful mother, 
all before soon changing the subject and telling her 
about my latest bhangra practice or my plans for the 
upcoming weekend. 

…

 Every time I return home, my mother unfailingly 
greets me with a loving hug, a plate of my favorite 
homemade Indian food (daal makhani, bindhi, 
parathas, and a side of suji ka halwa), and endless 
questions about the trip home. As always, I eat the 
highly anticipated food as I recount the tra$c and 
weather on the road, which is routinely followed 
by her updates on all of my upcoming dentist and 



How to “!read the Needle”

Aisthesis      Volume 11,  202044

doctor appointments. We both cherish one another’s 
presence, satis&ed, but in our own ways. 
 A!er a small lull in our conversation, I take a 
larger bite of food in anticipation of what’s coming 
next.
 “Have the tremors gotten worse?”
      
 As the resident nomad of the family, I am the 
only person in the world she asks this question to. I 
only come home for a few days throughout the year, 
so she knows that I can see the disorder’s progression 
with more clarity, with more distance, than most. In 
the beginning, this question never fazed me because 
I never hesitated to tell her the comforting truth, but 
time creates distance and distance thieves comfort.
 I take a second to pretend like I’m analyzing her 
status, acting as if I’m formulating a response. Seconds 
pass, and I &nally look into her anxious, wrinkled 
eyes. Reciting what I had previously practiced in my 
head, I tell her she’s doing much better than the last 
time I visited. %at her medications are working even 
better now. %at her morning yoga and ayurvedic 
treatments and a!ernoon mile walks and new diets 
are making all the di#erence. She hesitates for a 
moment, trying to decode my truth, before soon 
realizing the sincerity of my words. Happily, she 
leaves the room, and I am le! to watch her gait and 
hand movements, for real this time. 

…

 Every so o!en, I return to the sewing machine.  
While it started o# as a tool to attempt yet another 
thri! "ipping project, it has now become part of 
a therapeutic sort of activity. I o!en spend hours 
at a time at our kitchen table analyzing my newest 
&nds, imagining each cloth’s previous owner and 
envisioning its now future potential. My most recent 
project, a denim jacket, was the product of three 
articles of clothing, three independent past lives 
altered to now &t mine. Yet, it never escapes me 
that the longer I spend assimilating projects like the 
jacket into my day-to-day life, the harder it becomes 
to ever remember their old ones. 
 Although I still ask my mother for the occasional 
piece of help, I’ve learned a great deal about the 
workings of sewing machines: how to adjust their 
dials, how to change the patterns of stitching, and the 
most beautiful, the most frustrating lesson of them 
all: how they only know how to move forward.


