I offered to help at the craft fair, I really did, because I’ve been sewing since I was a little girl, before the war of course, when everything was… I don’t know, simpler? More straightforward. My mother, she taught me on her Singer, the old treadle kind, and I remember the hum, the rhythm, it was like a heartbeat in the house. And then the service, well, that was different, a whole different kind of precision, mending uniforms, keeping things together when they were falling apart, literally sometimes. So I thought, you know, craft fair, I can contribute, I can help with the fabric booth, maybe show some of the younger ones a trick or two, a proper hem, a clean seam, because they don’t teach that kind of rigor anymore, not really. But no, they just looked at me, sort of smiled politely, like I was… an antique, I guess. And then they pointed to the back, to a stack of cardboard boxes, just told me to "get them open." As if that’s all I am now, just a pair of hands to tear tape, a sort of… an instrument of demolition, not creation. And it just made me think, you know, about all the years. All the hours spent, the intricate details, the silk, the lace, the way a garment should fall, how it feels on the body. It’s a knowledge, a skill, a kind of artistry really, but to them it was just… boxes. Heavy, dusty boxes. I stood there, for a minute, and felt this wave, this sudden exhaustion, almost like a physical ache in my chest. Not anger, not really, more like a deep sadness, a sort of melancholic resignation. It’s like they looked at me and saw only the wrinkles, the gray hair, and couldn’t even imagine what I’ve done, what I’ve built, what I’ve repaired in my lifetime. It’s a kind of invisibility, I guess, that comes with age, or maybe it’s just civilian life, they don’t understand order, the importance of every part, the way everything fits together. I did it though, I opened the boxes. Because that’s what you do, you follow orders, you get the job done. But while I was tearing at the tape, pulling out those flimsy little trinkets, those mass-produced things, it just felt… hollow. Like all that experience, all that discipline, all that history, it was just… disregarded. Like a whole lifetime of knowing how to make things beautiful, how to make things last, was just… extraneous. And I keep thinking about it, even now, at 2 in the morning, wondering if I should have just walked away, refused the assignment. But then what? What would that have accomplished? Probably just confirmed their little prejudices anyway. It’s like a quiet sort of battle, you know, against being completely erased, against the world just deciding you’re not useful anymore. And sometimes, you just don’t know how to fight it. You just… open the boxes.