BY MAGGIE BEAMGUARD | INSIDER EDITOR
The last item of clothing my mother sewed was a halloween costume for my daughter, Norah, then age 6.
The heart’s desire of my child was to wear a red Princess Buttercup dress from the 1980s cult classic, “The Princess Bride.” What can I say about my daughter’s choice of a costume other than we are GenX parents of a certain age?
Since the film was released nearly 30 years prior, the guise was unlikely to be found in our local Walmart. Norah required something custom made.
“As you wish,” said my mother, who designed a pattern from scratch, fired up her 1960s Singer and held multiple fittings.
The stunning garment, more suited for a runway than the streets of our Wakendaw neighborhood in South Carolina, was Betty Frampton’s magnum opus.
I uncovered a remnant of this memory on a recent weekend sorting through my mother’s sewing area. Among the bobbins, pins, elastic and scissors (so many types of scissors) was a folded scrap of tissue paper marked with hem lines and the words: “TOP. Cuff. Buttercup. Cut 4. For Norah. Age 6.”
Mom’s house is filled with 85 years worth of art, antiques, books and vintage dinnerware we are readying for an estate sale. But between my fingers I held my inheritance, a slip of paper with zero monetary value. It mattered to only three people — my mother, my daughter and me.
It made tangible the reality of our relationship lived out in day-to-day acts of love and lives made richer by the sharing of knowledge, skill and creativity. A needle and thread. A well-placed button. Spinning in a new dress with a full skirt.
I know my mother valued these quotidian things too, because she preserved this relic for me to find.
If you are reading this little tale in print, you hold in your hands thin sheets of paper that may soon end up as bedding in a hamster cage or as cushioning in a packing box.
But one of these pages could also end up pasted in a child’s scrapbook or framed on the wall of a local business.
The wider world or even the next county may not take notice. But the stories we write matter to us.
My boss, John Nagy, describes the reporting we do at the Seven Lakes Insider and to a degree at our parent publication, The Pilot, as micro reporting.
An intensely local focus produces granular stories like the blithesome reporting from Emilee Phillips about the mysterious North Side Potato Man.
We devote column inches to the practical like the impacts of the widening of N.C. 211.
We touch on the poignant, covering sweet farewells like the one to our friend, Charlie the 24-year-old quarter horse at 7 Lakes Stables.
We explore local personalities such as our recent series on surrounding area fire chiefs.
All just markings on paper, but so much more. Ultimately the ephemera of our lives are made up of the micro, the proximate and the material. A student earns a scholarship. A new business cuts a ribbon. A neighbor wins a bass tournament. The garden club beautifies the school.
Trash to some, treasure to others. For all I know, this page might be put to use to cut a costume pattern. Or it could be kindling. Either way, there is substance.
