My mom left Ecuador for the United States when she was twenty, seeking better opportunities and a brighter future for herself and her future children. Along with her dreams, she carried pieces of her past, those being her culture, her memories, and a treasured piece of fabric from her childhood that has stayed with her throughout the years. As a child, she attended Escuela Fatima, a religious preparatory school, in Quevedo with her sister, the same school her mother had attended before her.  The school taught all the standard subjects but was also more traditional and thus also emphasized the art of sewing. For her final project before leaving for high school, she was asked to showcase everything she had learned, and she did so on this cloth, stitching every pattern and figure that she had mastered. To an outsider, it might seem like nothing more than a simple piece of fabric, but to my mom, it is a living piece of her childhood. It is a reminder of the nearly ten years spent with her classmates, ten years of teachers who gave her knowledge, especially in how to make and fix clothes, and ten years of walking the same hallways in her small yellow-bricked school. This piece of fabric isn’t just a relic of her past, but it is a connection to her time spent in Ecuador with her large family that helps make that distant time feel more tangible.
 

– Alexandra Rea

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant