The thing with helping, right? You just… you just offer. Like, a hand, that’s all. Not expecting a parade or nothing. Just thought, you know, my hands are good. Sixty-five years, practically lived with a needle and thread, fabric, all that. The scent of it, you know? Like a second skin, almost. Always been that way. My ma, her ma, all of us. The way the light catches a thread, even a cheap one, can make a whole thing sing. That’s a real skill, ain’t it? Not something you pick up from a YouTube video. This… this thing, the craft fair. Someone mentioned it. Needed help, they said. I said sure. Figured I’d be, I don't know, showing someone how to do a French seam, maybe fix a hem, talk about different weights of cotton. Something useful. Something with my hands. But nah. Not that. Not even close. Got there, bright and early, sun barely up, dew still on the grass outside the community hall. Smelled like old wood and coffee, that mix. Sign-in sheet, clipboards, a whole lot of fuss for what turned out to be… not much. A young one, maybe twenty, with a headset that looked too big for her head, she just pointed. Big pile. Boxes. Cardboard dust already stinging the back of my throat. And a box cutter. "Just get these open," she said. "We need everything out." EVERYTHING. Like, thousands of little things. Keychains. Tiny candles that smelled like fake pumpkin. Knitted coasters the size of a dollar bill. It was just… boxes. One after another. The tape, the way it rips, sometimes smooth, sometimes catching, leaving that jagged edge. The cardboard dust, like I said. Gets everywhere. Under your nails, in your hair, in your mouth. You breathe it in. And the smell, not fabric, not thread, not even the good smell of old wood. Just… cardboard. Stale air trapped in there for months. And the silence. Except for the ripping of tape, the grunt of someone else doing the same thing further down the line. No chatter. No "Oh, look at this lovely yarn!" Just the sound of things being opened. Over and over. My hands, though. They got tired. My back, too. Hunched over, pulling, lifting. These boxes were heavy. Full of all this… stuff. Stuff that would probably just sit there, not even sell. I mean, I don't even — whatever. It’s just how it is. You offer, you get what you get. But I kept thinking about the patterns I had laid out on my dining room table, half-finished. A dress, a proper one. Silk. Needed a tricky dart, a blind hem. Something that made you think. Made you proud when it was done. This was… not that. And that feeling, when you’ve done something for so long, when it’s part of you, like breath almost. And then someone just… takes that and puts it in a box. Literally. Like, they don’t see it. The skill. The decades. The knowing. They just see… a body. An extra set of hands. To open a box. Like anyone could do it. A kid. A robot. Didn’t matter who. Just had to get the stuff out. I kept thinking about my ma, when she had to take that job at the factory, after Dad got sick. All that fine needlework she did for the ladies, special orders, one-of-a-kind things. And then it was just… stitching zippers onto denim, eight hours a day. The machine just humming, always humming. She never talked about it much. Just went. Came home. Smelled like grease and something metallic. Said her hands felt like someone else’s. That’s how mine felt that day. Like someone else’s hands. Just going through the motions. The worst part, maybe, was seeing someone, a younger woman, maybe my daughter’s age, she was setting up a display of the tiny candles. Arranging them just so. With a little sign she’d written out in fancy script. She looked… engaged. Like she actually cared about those fake pumpkin candles. And I was just there, in the dust. My fingers, the ones that could make lace out of air, they were just pulling tape. Later, someone finally asked me if I wanted a water. Like I was a machine that needed cooling. I just nodded. Drank it fast. Still felt that grit in my throat. And I watched the fair fill up. People milling around. Kids running. The smell of popcorn, hot dogs. The sounds of laughter. And I just thought, this whole thing, all this effort, for what? For someone to buy a fake pumpkin candle? And for me to open a box. I went home. Didn’t even look at my sewing machine. Just sat on the couch. My hands felt… useless, somehow. Like they had forgotten what they were for. Like they needed to remember. But it was like someone had taken the memory and just… shredded it. Into little cardboard bits. Still feel it sometimes. That dust. Even when I’m nowhere near a box. Just gets in your head. And stays.