The Free Hugs Cactus Jacket

I made this jacket for a friend months before I actually gave it to her, and the joke behind it ended up meaning a lot more than I expected.

When I first met her, she intimidated me a little.

She is beautiful, smart, direct, and was always a little hard for me to read. Somewhere along the way, I started thinking of her as a cactus. Beautiful and interesting, but perhaps something you approach carefully.

Which is why I decided that what she obviously needed was a jacket with a cactus, a little sparkle, and the words FREE HUGS across it.

At the time, this joke existed almost entirely between me and myself.

I embroidered the jacket, added the details, finished it, and then life got busy. Our schedules never seemed to line up, so it sat waiting for her for months.

And then I got a call that I knew would eventually happen regarding my sister. One day, in the middle of a crisis, I was on my way to the airport. I could have called any number of people I am technically closer to.

I messaged my cactus friend. She replied immediately. I had known for awhile that my initial reading of my friend was wrong, well maybe not completely wrong. She is still a cactus. She is just apparently the kind that shows up exactly when you need one.

Eventually, I finally gave the “cactus friend” the jacket I had made for her months before I got the call that my sister was dying. The silly little Free Hugs joke suddenly felt different.

And when we said goodbye, she asked me for a hug. She said to me, “I know you are not a big hugger, but hug?”

That one got me. The entire time, turns out I was the cactus friend in her eyes too.

I make a lot of things because they are funny, pretty, ridiculous, useful, or because I simply want to see if I can make them. Every once in a while, though, something I make ends up carrying a story I could not possibly have known when I started it. This jacket became one of those.

It started as a joke about a woman I thought was a little prickly.It ended up reminding me that sometimes the people who are hardest to read are the ones who quietly show up when everything falls apart.

And that those people have an initial reading on me too.