Chapter Twelve: Valentine's Day, 1981

I knew she was up to something.

My mom had been spending an awful lot of time in The Pink Room, which, while it still hosted a twin bed, was used mostly for sewing. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in there, except for to raid the closet looking for hidden presents. After all, I couldn't sew. This has always been a sore spot for me. I took sewing classes through 4-H, which I came out of with a duffel bag and a skirt. But somehow, it was very clear to me that sewing was not my thing. It may have been because every time I touched my mother's old Sears sewing machine, the hunk of metal would know it was me and sacrifice itself by breaking a needle, bunching the thread, or simply eating my project whole. Eventually, I was forbidden from touching the sewing machine.

But my mom--she could sew. She could do a lot of stuff, really. Knit, crochet, macrame, garden, can, decorate. She even went through a correspondence course to become an interior decorator. She was forever re-papering, re-painting or re-arranging something.

Once, when I left for summer camp for one whole week when I was about ten, I came home to an entirely new bedroom. She had cleaned my closets, rearranged my furniture, and wallpapered my walls with Scooby Doo wallpaper. She was famous for powerhouse projects.

Her favorite powerhouse projects were holidays. My mom would single-handedly create the most awesome Christmas a child could ever have, complete with a silver christmas tree, a little village on the mantle of our fake fireplace, and cookies and milk for Santa. The season was always good for a trip to the mall to see Archie the Snowman, a twenty-foot-tall talking snowman who was just recently retired from his post after 35 years.

So, when Valentine's Day was just around the corner, and my mom was trying to inconspicuously sneak in and out of the Pink Room with yards of red and white striped material, bright red yarn and bags of PolyFill, I knew she was up to something.

And she knew that I knew it.

She tried to throw me off by carrying very interesting things past my room, like coat hangers and embroidery hoops. It worked, too. I had absolutely no idea what mysterious, magical thing she was creating behind that door, behind that sewing machine. But day, and often long into the night, I could hear it from my bed in the next room, the whirring of that machine, the rhythm of its stitches. I knew she was creating something for me, and the excitement was almost too much.

The presentation was actually rather unceremonious. I came home from school, or from somewhere, on Valentine's day, and they were sitting there waiting for me on my bed.

Raggedy Anne and Andy.

And there were the striped legs, and the headful of stringy, red yarn hair, and, well, I couldn't see the PolyFill, but I knew it was there. Their faces each bore a red triangle nose, perfectly round black eyes and eyebrows, a wide black smile with a small red rectangle right in the center. Ann and Andy were even wearing matching outfits, blue and yellow jumpers, Ann's a dress and Andy's a shorts set.

But the very best part, to me, was the gift that was hidden under each of their outfits, the gift that was usually known only to me, my mom, Ann and Andy. On the left side of each doll's chest was hand-stitched a little red yarn-heart, and within each little red yarn-heart was hand-stitched this message.

"I LOVE YOU"