Grandmom's teaching me how to in broder. She showed me how to make pretty stitches that look like flowers and she promised to show me lots more stitches too.
Grandmom has a box filled with special threads of all the colors God ever created and I want to make all my flowers a different color. Grandmom says, “That would be too much work.” If I was God, it wouldn't be too much work.
She got us snowwhite new pillowcases to broder in. There's a garden drawn on them and we're going to broder in lots of colors and all kinds of stitches. Once I've learned how to make them.
I'm supposed to wash my hands, with soap, before I touch my bordery. Grandmom says, “White won't stay white if you don't work with clean hands.”
One time though I didn't. I came inside and wanted to broder in lots of flowers to surprise Grandmom. I wanted her to show me a new stitch.
I looked at my hands and they looked clean so I decided I didn't need to wash them. Besides, I didn't really do anything to make my hands dirty. Grandmom says lots of stuff and I don't always do what she says all the time, like the times I don't think I need to.
When I was all comfy in Grandmom's rocker, I licked my fingers and squished the end of a pink thread so it would slide through the needle. Grandmom thinks this part of brodery is hard but it’s really easy for me.
Grandmom told me she liked to broder in clean snowwhite because white is like God's canvas and brodering it in with colored stitches is a reef lection of His creation. I don't know what a reef lection is, but I think it's something like a beautiful painting. I know you make paintings on a canvas because I've watched that guy on TV do it. And Grandmom's broderyed in things are just as beautiful as his paintings are. Yep, they’re a reef lection.
I was thinking about this stuff and making flowers and pretty soon the pink thread was too short to make any more. I pulled the needle out and poked it into Grandmom's pincushion and held up my brodery to look at my new flowers.
At first I thought there were shadows on the pillowcase but when I held it close I saw it wasn't shadows. It was dirt. All over the clean white. I licked my thumb and started rubbing it. It got worse and worse and I started crying. Grandmom would be so mad at me. She would know I didn't wash my hands even though she always told me to.
I knew she would be coming in from the garden pretty soon but I just sat there in her rocker crying and staring at my ruined brodery.
When she came in smiling with a pitcher full of pretty flowers, I scooted out of the rocker and just held out my brodery because I couldn't tell her what I did. And I couldn't look at her either.
As soon she took my brodery, I hid my hands behind my back. I wanted to wipe the tears off my face, but I was afraid I'd leave dirt on my cheeks. Even though my hands still looked clean to me.
Grandmom scooped me up and gave me a big hug. "I want to show you something," she said.
Grandmom was really nice instead of mad. She took me to the laundry room and poured some washing powder into the sink and ran some water. Then she took the hoop off my brodery and put my pillowcase into the water.
"Remember when I told you about the white fabric being like God's canvas?"
"Uh, huh, Grandmom." I was still sniffly but Grandmom's hugs made my crying stop.
"When God first made us, we were clean and white inside. But we're just people, and sometimes we do bad things. And that makes us get dirty. God knows that, but He loves us."
Grandmom swished my pillowcase around in the soapy water, pulled it out and rinsed it off and squished it in a towel. When she held it up it was clean again.
"That's why He gave us Jesus, little one. Jesus is the soap that washes us inside. He makes us clean white again. Now go wash your hands, with soap, and I'll show you how to in broder a vine.”
© 11/20/09
Thank you for reading my offering for this week's Friday Fiction!
Our hostess today is Sherri at A Candid Thought Click on over!
Check back tomorrow for my review of Dan Brown's new novel, "The Lost Symbol."
Catrina Bradley
"God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes."
Psalm 18:24 (Msg)
