As a very small child, I once fell ill, and my mother took me to her room to care for me. Thinking I was asleep, she was busy in the other room. I remember awakening and seeing a sewing machine my mother’s room. I got up and tried to pedal it. At first, I was not able to pedal it straight, but I kept trying, and finally was able to pedal it in a straight line. At that moment, I heard the footsteps of my mother approaching. I ran to the bed and pretended to be asleep. From that time, I was fascinated with clothing.

After that, I always wondered if my mother had been a tailor. Not more than two years later, my mother died in a tragic accident. Before she passed away I never had the opportunity to ask my mother why she had that sewing machine.
Things became very hard for me and my siblings after that, and we went and lived with my grandmother. I can remember every year at Christmas, my grandmother would have a tailor make dresses for me and my sister. After the tailor would make the dress, it always looked very big on us. She was a practical person, and wanted us to have a dress that we could wear for more than one year. We would wear the dresses on Christmas day and New Year’s day, and then my grandmother would save them until the following Christmas. I can remember that the even by the second Christmas the dress was still too large for me. And I never liked the way my grandmother always had those large dresses made for us.