What do you do when life throws you a lemon in the form of a contagious virus trapping you at home? The stock answer, of course, is that you find a way to make lemonade. In my case, I sewed face masks to help local health care workers.
From the start, when I first heard of the million mask challenge, it seemed ridiculous to believe that a home-sewn mask could help against an invisible, deadly virus. Health care workers would need professional equipment, made of special virus-resistant materials, not something created from leftover scraps from my quilting stash.
But it soon became apparent that handmade was better than having nothing at all. A friend of mine, a dietician in a nursing home, was ordered to get a mask before her Monday shift. With supplies of manufactured protection unavailable, her employer couldn’t help. Stores had none available. The only choice was to turn to hand-made face coverings. My friend sewed some for herself, but many of her co-workers needed help.
Once I realized the need, I dove in. I sewed not only because it was a way to give back. Sewing offered a welcome distraction from the non-stop gloomy news cycle. In my sewing room I could produce something useful and forget for a little while. I could make a difference.
At first the going was slow. Which design was best? What did the workers need and want? I tried various prototypes, all with their own advantages and disadvantages. Although I became more proficient and my production speed increased, I still didn’t feel like I was making enough of an impact against the flood of requests coming in through another friend’s Facebook site. So I put out the word to my quilting guild and recruited a friend or two.
Those people in turn called on others to help.
When I felt a little lonely, stuck inside apart from others, bent over my humming machine with only an audiobook for company, I remembered others working with the same intensity toward the same goal. As I sewed, winding yet another bobbin, ripping out another mistake, I considered not the power of a virus without a cure, but the power of people united toward a common goal.
Others worked with me, not only in the Tampa Bay area but around the country and around the world, sewing masks, winding their own bobbins, and sewing some more. I wasn’t alone after all. We were all doing our part.
If the scientists, doctors and professionals working toward cures, vaccines, and improved tests are even half as productive as the team I’ve been part of, then I know we’ll get to a place where there is a cure, a vaccine. There will be an answer for what originally felt like an insurmountable problem.
The books I’ve listened to have had messages as well. Both a novel about surviving Auschwitz and Frederick Douglas’s autobiography taught me that our struggles are nothing compared to theirs. And another, about mysterious messages contained in playing cards, taught me that we can all make a difference in the lives of others. We just have to figure out what role we’re meant to play and what we can offer. And the one I finished today contained maybe the best message of all: “The mind is magical. Human beings are magical.”
That’s what I believe. That we can overcome this virus because we’re all in this together, working together toward a common goal, even if we are simply bent over a humming sewing machine at home, alone.