I started a new job. Potentially it will just be a few hours a week, but recently it was more. I reconnected with a woman I knew twenty years ago, when our daughters were nursing babies in La Leche League. She runs a sewing studio that caters to girls eager to make things, and she needed a teacher. This week I spent four days there, with middle school students trying to upcycle clothes into fresh pieces. 

I am an avid sewer myself, and enjoy the chance to immerse myself in fabric. But six hours a day is a lot, and these girls reached their saturation points by two thirty. Chatting while we pinned, I realized that they are mostly the daughters of doctors and designers hoping to give their children an activity while they work. From their perspective, six hours is minimal. But for an eleven year old, it's a long day with scissors. 

It was fun to help them transform a t-shirt into a jumpsuit, or a dress with embroidery. For some of the day, their heads were bent over a pile in their laps, and I waited to be needed. But later in the afternoon they started to revert to preteens who are worried about their social standing. It was noisy. 

One girl charmed me with her innocence. Half of what she made was for her younger sister, and when she needed a break from seam ripping, she brought out Harry Potter and read it for what was probably the fourth time. Chatting with her, I discovered that her mother played the lead in The Nutcracker when she was a teenager, and they went to London this summer. She was as sweet as Hermione, and probably as smart. 

Another girl told me about her pets, making sure I knew the difference between hamsters and Guinea pigs. She was the most reluctant to ask for help, and raised her hand to ask if she could go to the bathroom. 

Two other girls were besties, and were dropped off in a carpool. They laughed and teased freely. But in listening, I found out that one of them had a death in their extended family this week, and so would not be going to the shore as they planned. She aspires to be a doctor, and to have a lot of kids. Some will be adopted. I was delighted to hear such aspirations from someone who doesn't yet have her twelve year molars.  

One girl joined late, and at first kept to herself. But I found out that her father had had a medical emergency that day, and she was worried about him. As she acclimated to the group, her energy expanded, such that it felt like a genie being let out of a bottle. 

I did assist in calming sewing machines that clogged. I did carry girls over the road blocks of projects gone awry. 

But I think what mattered most was that I heard their disappointments, their fears about middle school, and their hopes for the future. 

I wonder if fate will be such that I run into one of them in twenty years, when I go to a doctor, and notice a picture on the wall of her many kids.