Wanted: One Seamstress.

All I want is to have some silky sleeves attached to a dress I bought when my cousin R was here. The dress has "spaghetti straps." I love the dress, hate those straps. When I said that in the store, my cousin said it would be "a snap" for a seamstress to add sleeves to it.

Sounded reasonable to me at the time, so I bought the dress. I've been looking for a seamstress ever since. The first one must no longer be in business because her number is disconnected. The second one, whom I saw this afternoon, told me she "doesn't do sleeves."

Pardon me?

She does hems, buttons, zippers, seams. "No sleeves." And she shook her head from side to side to add an exclamation point to that statement.

Fine. All the while I'm thinking: "And you call yourself a seamstress?"

Back home I came, with the dress. I have one more place to try, but I didn't feel like driving towards League City today. I nearly just drove to the fabric store, with my mind set on doing it myself. I mean, really.... how hard could it be to attach two small pieces of sheer black silk to make a ruffled, drape-y style of three-quarter-length sleeve?

But I didn't drive to the fabric store. Instead, all the way home, I remembered this conversation that I had with my grandmother when I was about 13:

"Come here and I'll teach you how to sew."

"I don't need to learn how to sew. I can just walk up to the Avenue and buy any kind of dress that I want."

"If you DON'T know how to sew, then all you can buy is any kind of dress that they have. If you KNOW how to sew, then you can make any kind of dress that you can imagine."

......... That's the trouble with life: When you're 13, you think you know all the answers. And when you get older and you know the right questions to ask, the people with the right answers aren't with you anymore.