I’d needed time. Not dramatically — not a period of grief or intense feeling — just some time to let the object exist in my presence without the wound of it being what I felt first.
Rosa had done the stabilization well. The disrupted threads were clean, held in place, the motif legible even in its incomplete state. I could see what it had been and I could see what the cut had interrupted.
I decided to do what Rosa had suggested: honest visible mending. I used a thread that was similar but not identical — a slightly warmer ivory against the silk’s cooler white — to finish the disrupted area. Not to pretend the original motif was unbroken. To acknowledge the break and complete the cuff in a way that was its own thing. A fern frond that had been interrupted now curved toward a small added motif: a single curved stem with two leaves, not quite matching the original botanical vocabulary but related to it. A continuation rather than a repair.
I worked on it over two evenings. Ben sat on the other end of the couch with his laptop. He refilled my tea once without being asked.
When it was done, the cuff was different from the left one. If you knew to look, you could see where the original work ended and the addition began. If you didn’t know to look, you would see two cuffs with slightly different internal motifs and probably assume it was a design choice.
I think both versions of that perception are correct.