Measure of Comfort 

In a time of sorrow, it’s often those seemingly innocuous things that are somehow infused with the power to soothe. It could be the clock you inherited, the personalized pillow you knitted but never got around to giving away, or a bag of muffins handed to you by a stranger who knew you’d be hungry. Writers share the stories behind their source of solace following a significant loss

Cushioning the Blow

Rina Kaufman

I take comfort in: The pillow I made for my mother

When I was 21, I decided to take up needlepointing — not a very popular pastime, but I was bored being an “older single,” and since my mother was one of those who needlepointed at the bungalow colony pool, I thought it could be a shared hobby.

Much to our surprise, I was actually good at it. My mother and I never had much in common, but the time we spent needlepointing or discussing projects and stitches brought us closer together.

When I was 23, I decided that I wanted to surprise my mother by sewing her a pillow as a Chanukah present. It would be brightly colored (she loved lively hues) and filled with intricate and complicated stitches, including some I’d never tried before — something that would not only make her happy, but also impress her. The problem was that the project I was envisioning would take at least six months of steady work, and it was nearly Succos.

I decided to do it anyway, and for the next two-and-a-half months, I didn’t have a life outside of sewing. I would come home from work at 5 p.m., eat a quick supper, and sew until 3 a.m. I would then sleep for five hours, go to work, and repeat. I took my lunch breaks at the needlepoint store, working with the staff to perfect my rhodes, cushion, and byzantine stitches. No friends, no family, nothing but needles; I wonder what my mother thought I was doing.