And then she set about making me a new one. She said, it’s OK, he needs the shirt more than you. Cluelessly, I said, “Wow, I’ve got a shirt just like that!” My friend shifted uncomfortably in the bus seat we shared. A few days later I noticed my friend wearing one of my homemade shirts. She called my friend’s mom, but there was no sign of them. It was a weird scene, but whose first sleepover isn’t a little strange? When I got home my mom noticed I was missing some clothes. The man had also removed all the interior doors in the house, including the one on the bathroom.

My friend’s stepdad had killed it “as an example to the others.” I thought he meant other turtles, but that may have been an optimistic reading of the situation. We arrived to find a dead snapping turtle on his front walk, a shotgun blast in the side of its shell. My first friend invited me over for my first sleepover that year. Mom sewed a dump truck on the backpack and an excavator on the coat before writing my name inside the collar. Blue denim pants and jacket with a matching backpack. I loved the outfit I wore to my first day of kindergarten, though. We were too young to realize they were trying to warn us. The confused, half-smiling children on the cover showed my sisters and me what our next outfits would look like. Mom would buy wax paper patterns in those sturdy industrial envelopes. This was the 1980s, so the colors screamed like train whistles. I remember being five, running down the rainbow aisles with my arms out, feeling the textures change with each bound. We went to the fabric store as often as we went to the grocery store. When Pound Puppies were popular she even made those, cross-stitching the bootleg logo on the dog’s plushy butt. When I was a kid my mom made our clothes. Me, I never had a problem with the fabric store. I see them there, milling around the woodcraft section as though they had some kind of manly business there.

Some guys seem uncomfortable in the fabric store. My wife needs time and space to contemplate things like yarn, so I wandered the store. She likes to loom knit and thought she might try her hand at crocheting.

I picked the entertainment, so Christina got to go to the fabric store. Like with most parents, such occasions allow small joys that our busy lives often prevent. My wife and I recently enjoyed a rare evening out.

Dabble and stitch