Bonheur
This is a birthday card for Bubby’s grandma. She turns 85 on Tuesday. We don’t visit her as much as we should, even though she lives in the next town over. I feel like we make her nervous, with our boisterous, sometimes rowdy, kiddy ways. She likes to go out to eat, but always insists on paying for our food and I feel guilty about that. She lost her husband at a young age and has lived alone in her little white house for a long time. She has survived breast cancer and a heart valve replacement. She is quite a lady and has lived through a lot.
I originally bought this paper to make some sympathy cards. I thought it looked calm and serene. But I never got around to making those cards and I thought Grandma K would like it. I stamped the letters, inked the edges of the paper, cut and glued the oval and that was pretty much it. A simple sentiment sometimes says it best.
No Crafts Before the Sun Comes Up
We are in the midst of a craft bonanza at our house. All Arwyn wants to do, all day every day, is “make something”. I think this is great, I really, really do. Unless it is 5:45 am. At that ungodly hour all I want to make is a nest in my bed covers and dream of breakfast being magically prepared for me when I get up in two hours. I have encouraged her to draw and craft practically since birth. We have a wide range of materials available to work with. We paint, we draw, we cut things out of magazines. But I can only sit at the table for so many hours in a row and come up with things to make. I need some new ideas, some different books or a better imagination. The dining room floor is constantly littered with tiny scraps of paper that somehow make their way all over the house. She cuts, she glues, she draws smiley faces. We have made valentines to mail to family, valentines to give to our friends, valentines for Daddy, Juju, and Aunt Banana.
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of hours holed up in my room, sitting at my make-shift desk creating masterpieces. My bedroom walls and closet doors were plastered with my creations and I made cards for every occasion under the sun. My sister-in-law still likes to tell the story of how I made her a card when my brother asked her to marry him (and she foolishly said yes) that read “Congratulations on your EnGAGment”. I remember my dad coloring a Tom & Jerry page with me once when I was sick. He was really good at shading and combining colors, if I could convince him to sit with me and my ice cream bucket full of broken crayons. I remember my brother coloring with me on occasion (probably to impress his girlfriend — look how nice I am to my bratty little sister!). He added his own rude embellishments to the pictures, like arm pit stains and boogers. My sweet sister let me make the invitations for her baby shower when I was 12. My other brother brought Strawberry Shortcake coloring books back from Texas. But I cannot for the life of me remember my mom making much of anything with me. Maybe she was busy or tired, maybe she thought it was a waste of time, maybe after four kids she just wanted to be left the hell alone. But I really think it was because she didn’t think she was crafty. I do remember the workbooks she used to leave for me when she had to work on Saturday mornings. She would cover a few sheets of loose paper with simple puzzles and pictures to occupy me until she returned. I often wonder now what she was thinking as she made those. Was it a hurried scribble as she rushed out the door? Did she feel guilty for leaving? Did she wonder if I even appreciated her taking the time to make those for me? Or was she merely happy to have something to offer me, something that I loved and craved?
I often feel that I am living in the future instead of in the moment. “If Arwyn could read or write we could do this or that.” Those days will come soon enough. I need to be fully present in the here and now and enjoy the hours of cutting a piece of paper into a million tiny scraps. Instead of trying to make some great craft, I need to be happy with whatever she comes up with on her own and not try to force my grandiose ideas onto her. She’s happy even if her hearts are shaped like triangles, and that’s all that matters.
Back in the Saddle Again
A few weeks ago iMollie shared her fantastic idea for a photography workshop of sorts. She invited fifteen people of varying walks of life to participate. On the first Saturday we met briefly to discuss our assignment. The assignment consisted of taking 100 photographs and bringing five of those to the critique on the following Saturday. One print to represent each Prospect, Refuge, Peril, Enticement and Order & Complexity. At the critique we narrowed our five selections down to two prints to be shown at an art show the following Saturday.
I have to admit, at first this felt like an unpleasant homework assignment, something to merely get through. It was difficult to find the time to take photos during the week and devote the brain power necessary to think about what category each photo belonged to. By Friday (the day before the critique) I realized that I had to take more photographs. I wasn’t happy with what I had. I didn’t want to take five pictures of my kid to the critique. I wanted this to be about me and what I saw through the camera lens.
I devoted a big block of Friday to the project. I was able to do this because Arwyn was at Aunt Banana’s house for the weekend. As I walked around outside, thinking about the five categories of the assignment and freezing my ass off, it became more than just homework. It was fun. It turned parts of my brain back on that I had forgotten were there. As a stay-at-home mom, I spend the majority of my days caring for small children. This typically involves cleaning up messes, preparing food, taking various children to the bathroom, creating diversions and breaking up squabbles. It doesn’t involve thinking about what shape that shadow makes on the wall or if that viewpoint would suggest prospect or enticement. I take a lot of pictures, but they are usually of something cute or silly that the kids are doing. It felt so good to activate those dormant connections, to remember I am more than just Mommy. I am a creative person who knows stuff. I used to do things like this all the time. In the mediocrity of my daily life I often forget that I have something more to offer the world than a kiss for a skinned knee and a bowl full of cookies. I have thoughts and opinions and undeveloped talents.
I love being a mom and I really do like staying home most of the time. It is just so easy to forget what my life used to be like, what I used to be like before my life became an endless filmstrip of meal time, story time, nap time, bath time and bed time. I used to fight so hard to be seen and heard and I think lately I’ve just given up. It required more effort than I could afford. Even as I have written this, I have stopped to make a meal, wipe a bottom, break up a fight. It is hard to be creative when I only have a few spare minutes here and there, always interrupted. I didn’t realize before having kids that you would give up so much of yourself, sometimes willingly but other times not.
I read the blogs of a lot of very creative women that somehow seem to take care of their children and also create all of these wonderful books, clothes, pieces of art. I am making a vow to stop thinking longingly of this wonderful, creative life that I could be living and somehow, some way carve out those fleeting moments for myself.
Thanks again Mollie, for creating, hosting and enabling this wonderful project that has lit a fire under my behind once again. I am really looking forward to our art show and standing in the spotlight, if only for a second.
