My original college essay was rejected by my college counselor. It was my senior year, and I was completing my application to the University of St. Thomas. The application required an essay on “someone who had inspired me” – or something to that effect.
I wrote an essay about my mom and took it to Mrs. Quest to review. She read it and responded, “I think you can do better, Katie.”
I was crushed. It was personal. I was, after all, writing about the loss of my mother. I walked away, likely mumbling under my breath. The next day, I sat at Village Inn with a couple girlfriends, probably still bitching about having to re-write the essay. Suddenly, I had an idea. And in the midst of the chaotic restaurant, I wrote this essay.
When I took it to Mrs. Quest the next morning, she replied, “I told you so.”
Thank you, to Mrs. Quest and all the other teachers at Duchesne, who pushed me to be better. Particularly Mrs. Moeschler, who taught me how to write.
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Through the Eyes of the Machine
Those delicate hands guided the fabric through me for hours on end. Her sweet voice sang along to the Country Music Awards as she worked diligently changing my needle or presser foot. I heard her laugh and cry with her friends, whether they were stopping in from down the street or Florida. I smelled dinner on her as she raced from the kitchen to the sewing room and back again. I saw the integrity and dedication in her eyes as she worked through me. She was a woman of great patience; she placed her foot gently on my pedal never rushing the final masterpiece.
I will never forget the day an unfamiliar small pair of hands threaded my needle for the first time. The woman worked with the child in the same way she worked with me. She was gentle, patient and understanding. The love between the woman and the child was represented by the stitches they formed through me.
But as the years passed by, the woman came to me less and less and the child more and more, and eventually the woman came no longer. The child now works through me everyday, some days for hours, producing her own designs or finishing the works that the woman never completed. Although the mother no longer comes to me, I can still see her through the eyes of her daughter, who is growing up to be the woman she has always hoped to be.
My mother was a beautiful, petite woman who devoted her life to her husband, children, extended family and friends. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when I was thirteen, and she passed away two years later. When I was nine years old, she taught me how to sew. It was one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me because when I sew, I am reminded that she will always live on.
_Katie Ortman, 1999