The leftovers

A grandmother’s lesson, a gay boy’s secret, and the long road home.

When I was about six years old, my grandmother made me a handcrafted cloth doll. She sewed every stitch herself; his body, shirt, and pants were all done without a machine. She even spun his yarn hair.

Grandma loved to sew and had an entire closet full of fabric, some of it stored for decades. She would use bits and pieces to make what she called “leftov…