The summer when I was twenty, I went backpacking in a few European countries with some college friends. I think it was almost a rite of passage to do the tightly-budgeted-student-with-a-train-pass thing.
We had our Let's Go guide and advice from friends a year or two ahead of us. One was to sew a sheet into a sleeping bag, to use at hostels. My mother found a twin sheet from a set that no longer existed, and sewed it with the machine set on the largest stitches, in case we wanted to make it back into a sheet afterwards. I have many wonderful memories of that trip. Whether or not we ever unsewed the sheet is not something I remember, but we probably did.
My younger child, who is twenty, is in Israel with a Birthright program. This particular group is made up of students from three NYC colleges and universities. She came here for break, then went back to NY early in January, to go to Israel. She was packing to go, the night before she left, when she suddenly remembered something.
"Mom. One of the places we're staying is a Bedouin camp, and they don't wash the bedrolls between visitors. One of the things on the packing list is a sheet, sewed up like a liner." She looked a bit unsure, but I knew exactly what they wanted.
I found a sheet that had been new many, many years ago, bought for my older child. The fitted sheet was long gone. I began sewing, then remembered to lengthen the stitch, in case we ever wanted to take it back apart.
And I realized that I had come full circle. I was becoming my mother, and it wasn't such a scary thought after all.
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