Nostalgia, from this older sort of manual laborer, brings back too many memories, translated…
Aunty had, stuffed the cotton fillings back into where my jacket split open, she said this was, no big deal, there’s no need to cut off another brand new patch of cloth to mend it, just $100N.T. for the manual labor.
One hundred dollars can patch up this jacket that I’d, attached a ton of, sentimental values to.
In the 80s and 90s, it was the height of the sewing machine eras, she’d started working in the purse factories as a seamstress when she was just eighteen, she’d worked in the industry, for a whole of, thirty-four years on end, she’d left the factory, to take care of her young, and started, working from her home, but now, there’s, almost, NO more demands of these, homeworkers, and so, anything, sewing of the student I.D.s on the shirts, mending the clothes, patching the shirts and pants, anything that her sewing machines can do, she’d, taken them; she’d said, “even if what I’d made was only enough to put that extra dish on the table at supper it’d, suits me fine!”
Back then, she’d sat in front of the sewing machines, helping her family put food on the tables, and now, she’s doing it, for just that too.
the art, painted by the writer, from UDN.com
There were, two machines inside her living room, one was an antique from her own mother, the other, with the automatic motor from the era of handiwork done from home. As we’d carried on in conversations, her wrists turned the cloths, “This was a skirt from my husband, from before, I’d, loosened the waistlines, and now, I’d, needed to, loosen it again. But I still couldn’t, bear to, throw it away, because he rarely buys me gifts, hahaha!”
The sewing machines couldn’t patch up the times, but it can, help bring back so many memories as she’d, worked with it. Before I left, I looked over at the bags in her living room, and thought, there must be, all the memories waiting for her, to patch up in them.
And, this is, a DYING business, because everything IS becoming automated, and, the costs of manual labor being too high, which is why it’s really difficult, to find instances like this, but, the writer had managed to find a woman, who still helped patched up the clothes, using the old-fashioned ways here.
Life, the Obstacle Course 