Love Letters from God: April-May

I remember my first foray into the world of making – I was probably about 9 or 10 years old and I sat outside under some kind of makeshift gazebo-esque lean-to befitting the old growth forest atmosphere where my mother and step-father lived far far away from the world in their tiny cabin. I held lightly to the handle of the machine, letting my hand rise and fall with the smooth, slow, rhythm of the hand-crank. Each fall heavy and purposeful, elegant and glorious as I watched the needle push and pull thread through the purple gauzy fabric. Straight lines, straight long stitches steady as train tracks – shugga, shugga, pause, shugga shugga pause, shugga shugga .... reaching the end, reaching back to lift the foot up off the fabric, metal clinking goodness, I twisted the fabric back toward me, the foot falls again loud and sure and I backtrack, once, twice, three times and then finally I pull the fabric away – cutting it away from the thread. In my hand, I hold the teeny sleeve, the ruler wide strip of cloth and gleefully turn it outside right and behold the perfect little party dress – her first handmade slip of a dress, my Barbie, my doll, my outlet would be the belle of the ball.

My hand sat upon that crank many times, through Barbie clothes making, jean altering efforts to fit-in, through giggle fits and tears. I began making things first because she encouraged me to, my mom finding things for me to do during those visits in the woods, then I made things because there was little else, and gradually I learned new things, I followed patterns, I made patterns (rudimentary basic crudely based on what I saw patterns), and it was all just something I did.

But then it stopped. I stopped. I got to a time and place when I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was young and foolish and young, I wanted, I coveted what I saw around me and nothing I cranked out “compared” to what I saw and so I stopped. As I got a little older and became a mom, I tried time and again and I made things periodically, and I enjoyed it, but it was a rare occurrence and often motivated out of need for something rather than want, desire, play.

But this month ... these months ... have seen a change, seen me change my perspective, opening my eyes to the beauty of the weave, the simple joy in a stitch, a quiet contentment in my spirit ... I am making again ... for the first time without purpose or cause ... except my own. This month I have ordered and anticipated and eagerly received boxes of wool, mohair, cotton poly fuzzy joy in small round bundles of yarny bliss. I have build bigger and better looms, had my husband fabricate wooden needles with big eyes, found inspiration in a sister who loves to make and build and try as well (that’d be you, Lisa). And I am happy in it. Co-in-see-dance-ly, my mother continues to bring me all sorts of odds and ends she believes I can make things with ... she brings me jars full of clay wind chime pieces and fabrics and this and that, still finding me things to do, as if she knew I needed them even before I did.

I am not living the life I planned, I am not the classroom teacher I went to school to become, I am not even the mother I dreamed I could be ... I am becoming something much more ... I feel I am becoming the her I am intended to be ... a gift richer than I deserve or could hope to receive.

Thank you Lord, for these and all the gifts you have unknowingly bestowed upon this feeble frame. Thank you for sheep and goats and their fabulous wooly, hairy wonder ... for sisters with talent, for that singer sewing machine (which sits on my shelf as reminder, as inspiration), for my mom and her unwaivering belief in who I am. Thank you seems such a feeble word ... but thank you for walking me along this path for guiding hands on cranks, pulling threads through fabric, for pulling me out from my gloom and dark places ... for hands and the will for making.