My mother taught me how to sew. We would often make a day of
our shared interest – lunch followed by visits to our favorite fabric stores.
One beautiful spring Phoenix afternoon, we decided we would
visit a wholesale commercial fabric store to look for material to make
curtains. It was located near Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, but to get there, we
had to drive through Phoenix’s then combat zone, Van Buren Street.
We ate lunch then I drove over Van Buren, my mom’s foot on
her imaginary brake she used when she thought I was following too closely,
i.e., all the time. I turned right and headed south on a narrow north/south
street to cut over to Jefferson to the store. Almost immediately after making
the turn south, we found the street blocked by a two-door car.
We sat behind the car for a minute, watching as two young,
stocky girls in leather shorts and halter-tops and the biggest wigs I’d seen
since the 70s tried to get into the back seat of the sedan. A middle-aged man
was behind the wheel, slightly turned in profile to us, holding the passengers’
seat forward. The girls apparently could not decide which one was going to get
in the back seat. They had quite a spirited discussion, hands waving. They finally
traded places, apparently deciding who was going to ride shotgun and who
was getting the back seat.
For what seemed like a long while, my mom and I sat in
awkward silence watching this mini-drama. Finally, my mom, still staring
straight ahead, said, “Say, do you think they’re on the prowl?”
I burst into laughter. “Yup, mom,” I replied. “I think they
are.”
Finally, the girls situated themselves inside the car and it began
to move south. We followed it until it turned right. We continued on to our
destination – hundreds of bolts of brightly colored fabric, festive and tactile.
Phoenix still has a combat zone, but today’s its location
has changed. Van Buren still sports the occasional working girl, but much of
that area has developed into social services like the Salvation Army and
Community Bridges, the detoxification center for addicts and alcoholics at the
end of their trail. The sleazy, pay-by-the-hour motels that lined Van Buren
like the LogCabin Motel, that devolved from a quaint western motif into a
rent-by-the-hour (two hours, $25), X-rated movie-showing dump, have all been
demolished or gentrified.
Just as Phoenix devolved, my mother faded into Alzheimer’s,
the disease devastating her final years.
She has been gone for over a decade, but there aren’t many days that I
don’t think about her. I miss her keen perceptions, her dry sense of humor, her
robust laughter. These are what I remember about her, not the final days of her
disease. Whenever I sew, the touch of the material, the soft whir of the sewing
machine, reminds me of her, and I am grateful.
