Assalamualaikum and hello!
I can't sleep. Must be the coffee, though most of the time caffeine makes me sleep like a log. My brain accidentally hits the "memory lane" button, and I woke up to my cross-stitch box. A Van Houten chocolate box. The chocolate that were housed in it was my brother's birthday treat from mom, I think at that time he was maybe 9 or 10 years old. Close to eleven or twelve years ago.
I first started cross-stitching when I was 12 years old, right after UPSR (an exam for standard 6 pupils, primary school children of Malaysia). Mom was very happy and passionate in teaching me. After all, cross-stitch is among the things she's good at. My mom is a super talented woman. She can cook the best dishes, she bakes the best cakes and pastries, she can sew everything from clothes to quilts to bags, she can draw and color anything and it looks like Picasso's artwork. I, on the other hand, proved to be her firstborn who yet to master everything she's a guru at. Poor me.
Luckily I can do cross-stitch. So mom gave me a task, to complete a cross-stitched frame. Blue was my number one favourite color at that time. So my frame is blue. Another thing that mom taught me was to stitch perfectly straight. Yeah you don't just get your shit straight, you get your stitches straight too XD my first attempt, unsupervised, was a disaster. The back of my cross-stitch was like a hurricane, zig-zagging here and there. Mom made me correct it. I took out the disastrous threads and redo it. Tadaaa, as what you can see below (the back of a perfectly straight cross-stitch). Oh the clumps, is what we call i-dont-know-how-to end-my-stitches-flawlessly. Forgive me.
2005, I moved to a full-boarding school for my secondary education, where my schedule was packed as hell and I didn't really got the time to stitch. I merely touched my cross-stitch box, and the chocolate box lay serenely in my locker. I sometimes opened it, smoothening the Aida cloth, looking at the DMC threads thinking of what color will I use next, checking if my stitching needle is still there. I drew patterns on my maths book, simply coz the book has boxes and it resembles the Aida cloth. I stitched heart patterns and letters by the sketch I did on the maths book. Why a heart pattern? Because I was a young girl and young girls love heart patterns. Period.
Oh here comes the stupid-sad part. I had a boyfriend when I was in form four. He was from a different school and I thought he was cool. During his birthday, I made a cross-stitch of his name. I cut it out and sent it to him as a birthday gift. See the missing piece in the middle of the Aida cloth below? Yeah that was it. And the boy broke my heart after a year, pffft. Now he's doing mechanical engineering in the same university with me. We used to stumble upon each other in the bus, at events, and he did asked me out occasionally. I don't know what he really wants though, he left when I really needed someone to help me stand. I'll never forget that.
Now I'm looking at the first cross-stitch frame I finished. I am wondering what will be in it. What will I stitch inside the frame? It has been 10 years since I finished stitching the frame. I hope that when the time is right, god will give me the chance, strength and equipment to complete my empty frame. I want it to be meaningful to me, yes I am a sentimental person so bear with me :) If I am blessed with a marriage, a husband and children, I will teach my girls (and maybe my boys) to do cross-stitch, as lovingly as what my mom has done. I want it to be a tradition. It doesn't matter if I don't stitch a masterpiece. It matters because of the value you hold close to your heart. What reminds you of your family, your parents and children, and the memories.
Thanks for reading, I hope you understand what I am trying to convey :) What reminds you of home, of family, of your mom? Share with me!
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