I was getting ready to go out to dinner a few weeks ago. We were meeting an old colleague of John’s that happened to be in town for a business conference. Our first US visitor! I pulled on a pair of my favorite slacks and took a look in the mirror. Hmmm, something didn’t look quite right with one of my pant legs. I bent over and examined it. Uh oh – the hem on that pant leg was unraveled. We needed to get going, and everything else I had ironed and put on worked with those slacks. I MacGyver’d the pant leg with scotch tape and hoped it would hold through the evening. (Yes, it did, thankfully…)
The next day I realized that even if I wanted to re-hem the pants, I couldn’t. I hadn’t brought any sewing materials with me to Costa Rica. We only had so much room in our suitcases, and anything I thought I should be able to buy easily and hopefully inexpensively in Costa Rica, got left behind.
I am old-school when it comes to sewing. I grew up in a small Iowa town. When I was in 7th grade, our first year of Junior High, boys and girls attended separate classes so they could be taught necessary gender-based life skills. Boys went to shop class where they hoped they would be able to retain all of their fingers. (Most of their teachers hadn’t, and they would display the hand with the missing finger on the overhead projector as a cautionary tale.)
Girls attended Home Economics (Home Ec), so we could be taught how to cook and sew. Weirdly (or maybe not, considering the time period), there was also a unit that seemed to be about presenting our best selves. It included deciding what type of face shape we had and the best hair style for that shape. It was in this unit that my Home Ec teacher delivered a piece of advice that I have remembered to this day, “Not every girl can be pretty, but every girl can be attractive.” It was perhaps made more memorable because my Home Ec teacher, Mrs. H, was morbidly obese, obviously had to stuff herself into her shoes every day (parts of her feet spilled out of them), and wore very unflattering dresses that buttoned up the front and had a belt where a waist should be. Looking at her, it seemed there must be some point in a woman’s life when it wasn’t important to be pretty or attractive, but we never got that far in that unit.
Our first Home Ec sewing project was an apron (not using a pattern), straight out of Mrs. Cleaver’s wardrobe (from the old “Leave it to Beaver” TV show, for those of you too young to know that reference.) We got to choose our material and the ribbon that was used for the tie. I thought my royal blue material and ribbon with red, white and blue flowers was very pretty, and my sewing on that project should have earned me an “A.” Well, it should have, but Mrs. H took off a half-grade because I didn’t know how to iron it properly when it was finished. I am now also old-school when it comes to ironing. We bought an ironing board and iron in Costa Rica, and it is in our second bedroom, standing at the ready. (Note the ironing reference in the first paragraph.)
My grandmother could sew, my mother could sew, and I also learned to sew – more from my grandmother and mother than Mrs. H. I sewed a lot of my own clothes in high school. When my kids were young, I sewed some of their clothes, including their Halloween costumes (those projects dutifully started on Labor Day weekend). I sewed curtains for our houses – including the curtains for our total main floor remodel 5 years ago. I had a sewing machine and a sewing basket with needles, thread, scissors, measuring tape, and a ripper (you can’t sew without a ripper) that I had collected over the years. I couldn’t take it all with me when we moved. Now here I was in Costa Rica, with my pants’ leg down, so to speak, and me without even the basics of a sewing needle and black thread.
Our Walmart in West Des Moines had an entire sewing department, that included aisles with sewing notions, bolts of cloth and a cutting table. In Costa Rica we have a Walmart across the street. It is true that in our many adventures seeking other items in Walmart, I hadn’t seen a similar sewing department. I didn’t need bolts of cloth, etc., so I was hopeful that there was an as-of-yet undiscovered area with at least a needle and some thread.
We looked up “sewing needle” in the Google Translate app on the phone and wrote it on a notecard. “Aguja de coser” for sewing needle. “Hilo” for thread. We traipsed across the store but found nothing. I finally resorted to asking an employee. Mostly, it was walking up to the employee, pulling out the note card, pointing to it and saying, “¿Tiene?” (“Do you have?”). (Actually, I, of course, started with the phrase, “I am sorry, but I don’t speak Spanish,” which should now go without saying in these blog posts.) She looked at me quizzically, so I resorted to the technique that our Spanish teacher has told us to employ when we need to communicate and can’t find the words – act it out. I pinched my thumb and forefinger together and made a motion with my arm like a dolphin moving through water. She cocked her head, turned to a shirt on display, turned the inside over to display the shirt hem and made a similar motion. I excitedly said, “Sí!” She shook her head, “No al Walmart.” Walmart must view needle and thread the same as the nails we tried to find when we wanted to hang the clock – a necessity that is unnecessary for them to carry.
Next stop was the store in our apartment complex that sells all of those kids’ school and hobby supplies, in addition to toys, kids’ clothes, household goods, etc. We looked in the school supply and laundry sections. I wasn’t seeing anything but flagged down an employee and pulled out my handy notecard. She shook her head “yes” and led me to an aisle in the school hobby supply section, right up to … crochet hooks. I know what crochet hooks are because my grandmother also crocheted. I didn’t learn that skill, and crocheting wasn’t going to fix my pant leg hem. I again acted out the needle and thread motion. She shook her head, “no.” I replied, “¿Dónde?” “Where?” She shook her head.
We went back to our apartment and stopped to chat with our friendly lobby attendant, Pablo. Pablo likes to use our brief interactions to practice his English. He asked how things were going, and I tried to explain what I was looking for. He suggested the other department store in our complex. I was doubtful, but we tried it. The best I got there was a flat out no, and a shrug in response to the “¿Dónde?” question.
We reported the lack of success to Pablo on the way back to our apartment. We were in our apartment for a while, when there was a knock at our door. No one ever knocks at our door. I opened it to find Pablo with a sticky note. On it was a store name, with its open hours M-F and Saturday, and even a telephone number! Pablo explained that he asked his family, and his sister-in-law knew a store in old Escazú that sold needle and thread. I thanked him profusely. We looked up the store on Google Maps, and found it was near the town square, where the farmer’s market was held on Saturdays. We could find it! It was about an hour’s walk, but it would be a good thing to do on Saturday.
On Friday we had arranged to take a walk with a neighbor, Marcela, we recently met. Marcela lives just down the hall from our apartment. Her spouse works for the US Embassy and was currently out of town. Marcela is originally from Chile, so speaks Spanish. She has offered to help us with Spanish, and also be a guide for us. She is very nice. She hasn’t been in Costa Rica a long time but is willing to share what she knows. I had mentioned the quest for the needle and thread. She thought that we could probably find them at another store, El Rey, and that would be a good store for us to know about, anyway.
On Friday we trekked the hour to El Rey, which is near the large Escazú shopping center, the Multiplaza, but across the busy highway from it. The trek there was longer than it needed to be. There are a couple of pedestrian walkways across the highway. We took the first one, but the walkway on that side of the road ended before we got to El Rey and there was a river blocking any attempt at proceeding without a sidewalk or bridge. So, we had to walk back to the opposite side of the busy highway. It was only a short distance but still on a road that was also very busy and had no sidewalk. I was tempted to get out my umbrella to hold it out for “protection.” How would that help? Cars are very expensive in Costa Rica, and drivers are not likely to get so close as to get a scratch from an umbrella.
We finally made it to El Rey, and admittedly, I had not seen anything like it. It was aisle after aisle of all kinds of goods packed from the floor to very high ceiling – sensory overload. Marcela led us through each aisle helpfully pointing out all the things we could buy. There were rows of candies, party goods, household containers, clothes, toys, Christmas lights, car washing supplies, etc.
El Rey – one of the many candy aisles 
El Rey – Twister?
Although it might be easy to miss in all of the items sold there, we didn’t see a needle and thread. Marcela asked an employee. The employee led us to an aisle, where they sold craft supplies, right to an empty display hook next to safety pins. Marcela said, “they said they normally have them, but people have bought them all.” John and I later decided that the empty hook was not enough space to sell needles and thread, so don’t think they really had what we were looking for exactly.
After El Rey, the three of us explored a small mall nearby with a few shops. The only thing I found there was what appeared to be a book about Coco Chanel, who was holding a needle and thread, as if to mock me.
On Saturday morning John and I walked the hour to the old downtown area, to once again try to find the needle in the haystack that is Escacaú. John was walking in front of me to where he thought the store on Pablo’s sticky note was. We passed by an open store front, and I stopped. I am not sure why, because there weren’t bolts of material on display, but something about it said, “Here you will find what it is that you seek.”
We went in. I could see a plastic container with sewing machine bobbins. Aha! I pulled out the card to show to the young lady behind the counter. She asked something that sounded like “Machine.” I shook my head “no” and then pantomimed sewing. I was getting pretty good at it by now.
She pulled out a plastic box with compartments. From one of the compartments she held up a sewing needle! Success! My inclination was to buy lots of needles after all that it had taken to find these. I ended up buying four, two larger and two smaller. I also bought thread – black, white and off-white. I now kick myself for not buying gray, but again, had to restrain myself from not buying every color on display. I was so happy! When we got back to the apartment, I carefully laid my sewing treasures in a special box.
Today, Monday, we went to Spanish class. We’re just now learning past tense and John and I as partners had to write sentences about what we did over the weekend. We wrote a sentence about taking a walk to Escazú because Cindy needed to buy “aguja de coser.” Our teacher nodded and attempted to act out knitting. I frowned. “No,” I said, and once again pantomimed sewing. “Oh,” he explained. “Aguja de coser is used for knitting. Just a needle is aguja.”
“That explains a lot,” I answered. In hindsight, being led to the crochet hooks made a lot more sense.
It is said that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. The part of Escazú that we live in is considered fairly affluent. Maybe the folks here figure that if they don’t have camels or needles that comparison can’t be made and they will make it into heaven. Or maybe, they have maids that do their mending so they don’t have to worry about finding sewing needles nearby.
Remember, it's an adventure. 