my secret life: a stitching story
from issue one: by Rachel Funari
My aunt taught me to cross-stitch when I was ten or eleven. She was the housekeeper for a Catholic priest, and every summer until I was thirteen I visited her and Father in the enormous rectory they inhabited in small-town Pennsylvania. This place had a kitchen as large as a cottage, and the upstairs had three bedroom suites — each with its own sitting room, bedroom, bathroom and colour scheme. My aunt would give up the blue rooms for me to have all to myself. She acted as though it was a vacation for her to sleep in the one single (orange) bedroom; the third (green) suite was reserved for visiting priests. In the evenings before bedtime, we’d gather in Father’s (brown) sitting room to watch television together. My aunt would sit on the couch, holding up a mirror and plucking her chin hairs. Father would sit in his large recliner and, hopefully, break out one of the boxes of chocolates he still had left over from Christmas. And I’d sit in the rocking chair between them, happily stitching away, concentrating on keeping the chocolate away from my work.
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