Making "For Now" Longer

I'm not sure where this story begins.

It ends with a pair of pillows that I restuffed earlier this week because they were sad and droopy. I've had them tucked away awaiting restuffing and a bit of mending for a while, but fixing a couple pillows has never been a top priority.

Last week I picked up new shirts for work at a thrift store (an action that is not super-compatible with my Project 333 Challenge, by the way) and was exploring the craft section when I saw a practically brand-new bag of fiberfill. "I can use that!" my brain shouted, so the bag came home with me and has now been emptied into my two pillows. Because sometimes the spark needed to finally do something lands in the right place at the right time.

Back where they belong. Slightly wonky, because of the
resewing process. But "slightly wonky" is very like
my Chadwick, so no worries there.

You see, I've had these pillows since the first year I was married, and Chadwick loved them and used them for so much lounging on the couch that the inadequate bit of stuffing I had managed to scrounge up on our painfully limited budget back then was soon flattened. We didn't get rid of them, though, because they had sentimental value and anyway, all they needed was a bit of fiberfill, and surely we wouldn't be living on a craft-free budget forever, and as with so many things that are relegated to the back burner the pillows stayed there for years, kicking around in our bedroom but never seen in public.

Chadwick loved the pillows so much because he had loved them in their previous life as his favourite t-shirt and shorts, and one day he came home to find a pair of pillows sitting on the couch that looked suspiciously like some things that used to be in his closet. (I gave him fair warning first, but he didn't take me seriously because he thought I didn't know how to make clothes into pillows. He was mistaken.) I thought he might be a bit sad, but instead he was delighted--he'd only been hanging on to that shirt and shorts because he was reluctant to throw them away and now he didn't have to. And there was much rejoicing in Chez Wilcox.

Because they had needed to be thrown out, quite desperately. You know the current trend for bare shoulder tops? That's more or less what the shirt had turned into, because it had so many holes, and I fully expected that one day Chadwick would put it on and the collar would stay round his neck while the rest of it just kept on going until it hit the floor. He had agreed not to wear it in public, at least, but then he kept forgetting because it was still in his closet and available. The shorts had much the same problem. I had mended those more than once just in the few short months we had been married, but they had reached the point that they were more patch than original in a fairly vital place.

He had been a bit wary, for my first birthday of our marriage, of buying me the sewing machine that I'd asked for--partly because it was way not in our budget, and partly because he didn't want to be the husband who bought his wife an appliance as a gift. But I insisted that I couldn't look after our belongings properly if we were relying on my patience and mental fortitude for hand sewing, so off to Sears we went and bought the machine I'm still using 15 years later. Once he realized its usefulness for keeping his clothes in circulation much longer than he could have done it himself, he agreed that it was probably the best birthday gift he'd ever given anyone.

Chadwick in the shirt before it began disintegrating. Based
on the boxes on the countertop behind us, I'm guessing this
was probably the first week we were married. That was
such a crappy apartment, but it was ours.
Also, dang, we looked good!

He was crazy-proud of the fact that his wife could sew. The first time I mended his clothes, he sat back in shock and watched me fix rips he had thought were unrepairable, only to put whatever it was back on and see he didn't have to throw it out after all. He was still in college at the time, and rumor has it that he was like a little kid at show and tell when he wore newly-mended clothes to class. I'm pretty sure this is why married students at Christian universities have a reputation for being slightly off-balance, y'all. They brag about things like living on a tight budget with the help of a needle and thread.

So the pillows are back on my sofa where they belong, and I can still feel Chadwick's delight hovering around them. The fabric is at least 20 years old and won't last forever, but thanks to a chance find at a thrift store and a faithful sewing machine, I at least have them for now.