One Good Deed

I abandoned my kitchen this week, probably for the best seeing as spring decided to give way to full summer. There was no need to heat the house with a recipe from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible. Except that if I had, there might be a plate of madeleines sitting on the dining room table. Mmmm. Perhaps next week will be better suited for culinary exploits.

This week’s creativity fell predominantly on mask making. The hobby that’s taken up quite a bit of my time since March.

Before COVID, I was only the occasional sewer. A costume project for the library comic con here, a repair there. I know little more than the basics. Mostly because I never dedicated much time to expand that knowledge base. But what I know is sufficient to keep me busy and covered in stray thread.

I’ve lost count of how many masks I’ve made. I’m sure the count is in the hundreds somewhere. With so many folks hopping on the call to crafting, I probably could stop and put everything away so I could remind myself what the carpet looks like.

I haven’t yet, and I don’t think I’m going to any time soon.

It sounds silly to say this, but sitting in front of a machine and sewing rectangle after rectangle has made me feel better.

Wow. How descriptive there. What a whiz at talking about feelings I am, huh?

When the stay at home orders started coming down, there were days where my stomach was fluttering wildly from anxiety. Closing down wasn’t entirely foreign to me. I was living in Waltham during the stay at home order during the hunt for the Boston Marathon Bomber.

That was a stressful morning. An eerie afternoon. There were no sounds other than nature and the occasional siren filtering into my third-floor apartment. By the time the perpetrator was caught, and the stay at home order lifted, my nerves had experienced a good fraying in just a little more than a full workday.

Even after that day, I could not fathom entire states going on for weeks and weeks, with the majority of residents only going out for essentials.

I’m not a very good binge-watcher. So, through all of this, I haven’t really leaned in on the TV content available. After about half an hour, I need to put something in my hands to keep me from fidgeting. Crochet, knitting, puzzles, pumpkin carving. With one of those things in hand, the time can be labeled as productive.

For a while, I found myself going straight to my phone rather than a passive activity. Facebook, Instagram, and the news feed. Scrolling endlessly through the headlines resulted in nothing other than more anxiety and questions. I needed to do something. Otherwise, I was going to go batty.

Enter my Singer Featherweight. A present from Mom and Dad the Christmas before last to replace my basic machine. Just after this Christmas, Mom had just given me a pile of her material stock. Her quilting material stock. Well, if that wasn’t fortuitous, I don’t know what is. I was off to the races.

The project offered me more than a way to occupy my time. I was putting what knowhow I had relevant to the current crisis to use. Sure it was limited. I have no medical expertise. I don’t have a 3D printer. I’m not an engineer. I am not a scientist. All of those things would be far and away more helpful. But I had a sewing machine.

Anyone following this blog with any kind of regularity would remember my lack of posts for a while. I just couldn’t put pen to paper- eh, fingers to keyboard. That doesn’t have the same ring, but you get the idea.
Through this project, I was able to channel a lot of that anxiety into a product. To call it a huge relief would be an understatement.

There has been something else I’ve gotten out of this endeavor of mine. One I didn’t really expect.

Adam and I live in a large condo complex. On our neighborhood board, I saw a few people posting tutorials on how to make a mask without a sewing machine. Since I was already locked into my sewing habits, I offered up my services. Now, I even leave a table with individually bagged masks outside on nice days for folks to come by and pick up on their own.

Beyond the relief of being able to find masks, the common thread from my neighbors is the incredulity in donating the masks rather than charging for them.

I don’t see the profit in charging for the masks I make. I’ve already received payment in the form of not sitting inside, bored, and anxious. I have been extremely fortunate to be employed at a company that is not considering layoffs/furloughs. Not everyone has been so lucky. For me, it feels only right that I use that fortune to help out where I can.

Some folks have just been ignoring my insistence of a price tag of free. My car window grew a five dollar gift card one day. A twenty-dollar one was dropped off another day. Bags of material have sprouted from my front doorknob on multiple occasions. A twenty-dollar bill got stuck to the weight holding down the boxes with the masks. A seventy-yard spool of elastic was donated for the mask making effort. Many thank you cards have been tucked between our storm and front doors. Even a four-pack of toilet paper made its way to us in thanks.

With a constant news cycle focused on the dreary to downright depressing news, it has been nice to have such a positive counter stream to draw upon. Especially when I see stories about people refusing to wear masks into public spaces.

Even though I make them, I know they are cumbersome, and there is no way around that. Honestly, it sucks that there isn’t a better way to cover our nose and mouths. And having to remember to bring at least one with me and a disposable receptacle for the mask once I’ve used it is hard. All the same, by putting one on, I am helping someone else. I don’t know the person and probably never will. But that’s not really the point.

It’s about two minutes to noon, we’re all back in our first-grade classrooms waiting for recess to be called. Which won’t happen until everyone is following the rules. I am sure we are all familiar with this feeling. There is at least one kid not following the rules, holding the rest of us back. No one wants to be that kid. Let’s work together to get out on that playground.

Alright, Nerd Girls, I’m off to iron more masks to donate. The Avengers, Super Girl, Snoopy, and Harry Potter need to liven up the PPE scene.

Hey, just because they are protective gear doesn’t mean they can’t be nerdy too.