Summer

Black leather and black cotton stitches. It couldn’t get less summery but for the elderberry dye on the embroidered cotton inside. The name summer came to me after a minute thinking how to name this pouch.

Summer, as I embroidered with the summer starting. I began this swath a bit before I’d go over to my dad in the Netherlands. I always like to have a project going, for the early morning contemplating and only then being able to sit quietly, my hyperactivity not yet kicked in.

Summer it was in the Netherlands, a glorious bright blue mid June sky with a sun peeking over the homes around ours. I’d pitched my tent in the garden though I couldn’t get enough sleep as a road not too nearby had a constancy of cars and trucks on it. I heard every single one of them, in an endless stream of buzzing not dissimilar to Paraguayan cicadas.

At daytime, the voices around our home were Russian, Arabic and Dutch. My childhood home had transformed into a place with added unfamiliarity. As so much more had changed over the years and to my surprise, I liked what I saw. Even more so, I was not disturbed by neighbor voices and neighbor dog barks and yet more surprisingly, not one grass mower, string cutter or any other hideous garden tool was to be heard (except my dad’s but that doesn’t count). In fact, it was pleasant.

My dad, as a widower, never uses much kitchen appliances and therefor I was thankful for the mixer originating from before I was born, to make my dad an apple cake.

Contrary to our Hungarian bubble, I was able to talk, I could say words without thinking too long and I could be spontaneous. Totally stupefied I was when our neighbor child made a remark that left me thinking how he could say such a smart thing while I was up on the roof cleaning the facade. People would come to me, talk to me, inquire about me, compliment me. Family would visit my dad and me, old family friends would come to my dad and me. I’d go walking to the supermarket every day and wave, smile and enjoy talks. Suddenly I was in the midst of social enveloping.

While embroidering the easy pattern, though not a quick one (it took me three weeks several hours a day), I would evaluate. Uprooted, that is what we are in Hungary.

Helping dad out, where he does not need help, I got hyperactive in the many tasks. Hurry burry spoils the curry or haste is waste. ‘You are doing too many things at once,’ dad comments, and that is true.

Summer it is, in my heart and outside in the world. For the knowing and, also, upon returning to the Hungarian bubble.

At home with my dad I refuse to buy expensive, unnatural, glasshouse grown or airplane brought in vegetables. If I can’t eat fresh and as good as my own produce, I rather eat simple fried rice.

Where ever I am I take some importance to the way I can drink my beverages, either chai in its original Indian flask or flower tea from my own garden in a glass cup that I think is good.

The pouch is not entirely perfect in my view, a rule I usually go by or else I undo and transform it until it is perfect to me. But not this time. The leather, a trench coat from C & A, was found in the forest, smudged with rain and sunlight, stiff and blotched. I cleaned and softened it but stitching and shaping and handling the material is a skill I don’t know much about. Yet, each time I see the pouch I am not unhappy with it either, simply because I could not do it better, and so here I present it to you: Summer.

The coat I found in the forest. I left it for a month on a visible spot but no one came back to retrieve their lost garment.

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