Sanctuaries perhaps bring to the mind places such as holy temples or auspicious buildings. My definition of sanctuary is a place of retreat, a hideaway, a haven or a safe place, aka: my sewing studio. This is where I was always intended to be. When my children were babies and I was a farm wife, I had a sanctuary much like the one I have today on Stauffer Avenue.
Our farmhouse was quite small. Four people could comfortable sit around the kitchen table even though the table needed to be pulled away from the north wall and the person sitting on the east side of the table prohibited access to the kitchen cupboards. It worked. The open dining room and living room were the expanse of the width of the home. A double bed in the downstairs bedroom with a double dresser was pushing it for a rag rug to lie flat on the floor in between them. The upstairs had two bedrooms both with the slanted knee walls and also had the only full bathroom in the house. So what does an enterprising family do . . . make every square inch of that full basement work for the family.
A bit of plywood to make a surround and the stool in the basement felt private. A laundry sink with a medicine cabinet above it came in handy when either the upstairs bathroom was occupied or it was handy coming in from the outside with hands that needed washing but not necessarily wanting to take work shoes and clothes off to make the trip through the entire house to get to the upstairs.
We made a closet out of the southeast corner of the basement that was large enough for two Sears and Roebuck freezers to sit side by side as well as house the fuel oil furnace. The west portion of the basement was divided by a concrete block wall. The south side was for the fantastic family room. Ya, we had a family room in the 60s in our basement. The finer finishes of that family room . . . we really need not get into. The north portion of that basement had a root cellar complete with shelves that held all of our canning jars, crocks of rendered lard and, of course, sauerkraut. The remaining of that north area was my sewing studio.
My Christmas present that year from Orlin was a sewing table to hold the new Sears and Roebuck sewing machine, model 1820. The table had pull out leaves that allowed the table to sit down a bit for ease of the user. The machine was tricked out with cam and a button hole attachment and could do zigzag. To finish out that little sewing studio, an office chair on rollers and a fold down cutting table. Wow! It was very snazzy and I was content. It was easy to keep an eye on Carrie and Kevin as the first thing they learned was to come down the wooden basement steps on their butts one step at a time until they could master walking them. A piece of carpet on the floor for the kids to play on with their toys, an old brown velvet sofa from an auction from which they could nap on or watch television completed the ease of me sewing while having the babies close by.
Eventually Orlin had a vinyl recliner in the family room. Some days it just felt great to come in from the heat of farm work, go into the cooler basement and take a well deserved break. We couldn’t turn down the score of a piece of slate chalkboard for the kids to write on. Yup . . . quite the score. Kevin was sitting on the arm of the sofa contentedly watching television and lost his balance and fell against the raw edge of the slate and cut his back. Thank God for nearby laundry baskets to pull white clean dish towels out of to tightly wrap around him as we headed to Hutchinson’s emergency room. Oh my God! Such a little back and such a long cut. Kevin was uncomfortable and Carrie had gotten very scared taking it all in. I remember . . . that night I rocked Carrie and Kevin both in the huge over stuffed rocker from Grandma Schafer until Orlin came in from checking on the barns and took one from me one at a time up to bed.
Umph. Today I had just finished a mending job for Kevin here in my sewing studio and memories just flooded in. Old ones and good ones and very tender ones all the way around. Yes, I am where I am meant to be, here in my sanctuary where good things happen. I often times am here with: me, myself and memories.
