Barnmaven

The adventure years

I was in the 8th grade when my mom turned forty.  A couple of years before, at the end of my 5thgrade year, we had moved out of the city to an island in Puget Sound.  On a small two and a half acre hobby farm Mom transformed from urbanite to country denizen, planting a garden, learning to haul her daughter around to horse shows and riding lessons, tending a flock of chickens and all the other sundry things that rural life involves.  The year she turned forty, Mom entered what I tend to think of as her "real" life -- now that my brother and I were less dependent, she had more time and energy to invest in the things she wanted to do. 

It started out with a daily walk and a few friends who were also interested in getting in better shape.  Before long she was race walking over 3 miles a day, entering 5K and then 10K events.  By the time I headed off to college what had begun as a daily walk had turned into overnight mountain hikes in the Olympics.  When my Mom was in her fifties she had better looking legs than most women a quarter of her age, and she had the stamina to match those muscles.

Since then she's slowed down some, but not much, not by most standards.  She takes Zumba classes a couple of times a week and when she's not Zumba-ing she goes for walks or works out to videos.

Thanks to my mom I've grown up with a terrific example of the benefits not only of exercise, but of taking the time to do what you enjoy. 

When I bought my midlife horses five years ago I think one of the last things I expected to ever be doing was to ride in a horse show again.  My years of circling a ring were a long time ago.  The last few years have been more about enjoying my horse, but what I've found is that enjoying my horse naturally leads me to wanting both my horse and I to grow in what we can do together. 

We progressed from general trail riding to mounted orienteering, then last summer we started working at cow sorting and re-learning how to ride english - and we started jumping.  Whenever I can I take my horse to clinics and events that I think will help both of us improve what we already know and find new things to try.  With the encouragement of a couple of my friends, this past weekend I entered my first horse show in almost thirty years. 

I didn't go with any pretense of thinking I'd win a bunch of ribbons.  For one, it was a schooling show, which is a much more relaxed environment than a straight-up show.  You can use training aids and you don't require formal show clothing.  Because Bugs had never been in a horse show environment I thought it would be a great learning experience for him - and it was.

I was so damn proud of that horse.  He's a big, energetic boy, very forward and all GO.  I usually have to wear him out a little bit before he can become smooth and relaxed.  Saturday was no exception, but we had a great judge and he was very generous with providing feedback and suggestions.  We entered eight classes - and came home with eight ribbons.  Even a first place ribbon, but I take no pride in winning the Novice Western Horse class with only three riders, one of them about seven years old on a Bashkir Curly horse named Peaches. 

I do take pride in how far my horse and I have come together.  He teaches me and I teach him, and together we are having great adventures.  I'm way closer to fifty than I am to forty anymore, but thanks to my Mom I know that I'm really just in the early part of my adventure years.  Mom knew it before I did -- there is no age limit on discovering something you love to do. 

Many of the women I encounter on the trail and at clinics and other events are my age and older.  Some have been riding their whole lives; some discovered riding after their kids grew up and are getting as much time in the saddle as they can.  One woman who I met at a clinic is in her 70's, still active and still riding.  I want to be that person -- the one where all the kids on the trail ride go home and tell their friends about:  There was this lady on the ride that was like 90 years old. 

When I pulled in to the horse show on Saturday morning, just me and my horse, I felt a little out of place.  I didn't know anyone there.  SG would be arriving later.  My friend Debbie was nowhere in sight.  I filled out my entry form, paid my fee, got my number and put the final grooming touches on my horse.  While I was standing outside waiting for my first class to be called, who should drive up but Mom. 

How apropos that the first person to show up and offer support at my first show since the late 1980's was the woman who taught me that life begins in your forties.

Thanks, Mom.  I love you so much.

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If wishes were fishes

I love the way memory is so intricately connected to the senses.  A smell, a taste, a song can take me back along the timeline of my life, often to a place or person or event I've not thought about in years.  There are times when the reverse is true as well -- a memory will evoke a sensory response.  I look at a picture of me cradling my infant daughter and I can smell milk and lavender-scented baby wash.    I can flip through an album of old remodeling pictures and remember the feeling of being caked with soot and fine black dirt from taking four layers of roofing material off our old house.

I have tons of photo albums full of images I really should put in digital format to preserve them.  For every picture that was developed and put into an album, there are about five more that didn't make it into the highlight reel of my life.  Those photos and all of the duplicates that didn't get given to friends, relatives or grandparents, they are all in a plastic bin in the extra bedroom.  The last time I really went through them is when my ex and I divided our belongings and I needed to go through and give him an equal sampling of our joint history as captured on film.  The problem with going through that box is that what started off as a planned one-hour project quickly turned into a four-hour journey into the recesses of memory.  I need to go through that box and get its contents put into a more durable format, and right now I don't dare.

I would love to tell you I live life with no regrets, but the hubris of saying so would only invite the Universe to go right ahead and unleash the Kraken. 

There are people I've lost touch with that I wish I hadn't.  There are people I've hurt that I wished I hadn't.  There are people I've loved that I wished I hadn't.   Choices I've made that were so monumentally stupid that I'm shocked it was me that made them. 

As many regrets as I may have, marrying my ex and having our children is not one of them.  Sure, there were times during our separation and divorce that I wondered if it had really been worth it, but that was mere misery beating its breast.  My children are the greatest treasure of my life, and I would not trade one moment with them for any amount of money, comfort, or success.  I don't make that statement lightly; In the past months I've had career opportunities dangled in front of me that were definite steps up the ladder in terms of title and income.  Two questions I asked myself: 

1.  Is there anything so wrong with my life right now that I would consider making a dramatic change?

2.  Would this career advancement make me less available to my children?

The answers were and are crystal clear.

My babies are not babies anymore, but they aren't teenagers either.  The years remaining where they will really need me the way they do now are few.    I see no gain in wasting what small time I have left of their childhood.   Its not selfless; I worry less what they would think of me if I treated my career as being more important than their needs.  I worry more what I would think of myself if that were true.

When it comes to my children, the only possible regret I have is that I have only two.  Before I met SG I didn't give it much of a thought.  In the last year or so, however, its been an oft-discussed topic.  I've examined every ramification and rejected all of them up until the realization that one reaches a point in life where it is no longer optimal to be pregnant or raising an infant.  I don't want to be depositing my youngest into Kindergarten when I'm 52. 

Its just water under the bridge now, but that doesn't mean my soul is yet fully convinced I should be done having babies.  If anything I wish that I'd started earlier.  I was already considered to be in "advanced maternal age" when I had my daughter.  Three months shy of my 40th birthday I delivered my son.   By the time it would have been about right to consider another baby, we were in the throes of a cross-country move which was soon followed by a string of diagnoses and eventually the end of a marriage.  

I'm left to imagine who a child of this marriage might be.  Every time the kids say they wished they had a little brother or sister I feel a sharp pang of loss for the alternate life's journey where I wasn't on the wrong half of my forties or had gotten my shit together a lot sooner.  An alternate timeline where I met SG more than a decade sooner, or wasn't so old now or where we hadn't chosen permanent options regarding fertility.

The days for babies are over for me.  All that's left to me now are pictures, videos and the occasional pang of regret.  The reality I live in is truly sufficient; I am fulfilled by my relationships with my family.   There is nothing that I need that I do not have in abundance.  Sometimes, though, its not the things you need that trip you up; its the things you think you want.

 

Do Re Mi

When I was very little, a neighbor died and gave us a piano.  My mother was the only person she knew who played, and so she made a specific bequest in her will.  I took to it like a duck to water, and it wasn't long until my father had to draw a line in the sand:  Either that kid gets lessons or I get out the chainsaw.

And so began my first passion:  music.  We had that piano until I was well into college, and I took fourteen years of lessons on it.  I love to play.  I'm not a concert-level pianist, I lack the true gift for that, but I can sight read like a house on fire and I can sing.  When horse therapy isn't possible due to weather or timing, music therapy is where I turn to ease my troubled soul.

As a kid whenever we had a dinner party my mom would sit me down at the piano and I would play all of our favorites out of a big hardbound book of standards.  I knew most of the popular songs from the first and second World Wars and every hymn in the Episcopal hymnal.  Everyone would sing along, and no evening was complete without a round of When Irish Eyes are Smiling, during which my mother would inevitably cry as it is the song that reminds her most of my grandpa who died when I was seven.

There has always been a piano.  Until last year.  When my divorce was final, my ex got the piano we'd been given by his parents.  It was from his family, so it was only fair, but it was painful for me as I was the only person who for a long time ever played it.  When he finally arranged to pick up the household furnishings that were his, the one thing I hated to see go was that piano.  Christmas last year was the first time in more than 40 years I didn't have a piano to play and sing Christmas carols with.  Oh, I made do with my guitar, but it really wasn't the same.

A home just isn't home to me when it doesn't have a piano.

A few months ago I found an old Vose & Sons cabinet grand on craigslist.  Over 1,000 pounds, with a rosewood cabinet and original ivory keys, it had been in the owner's family since the day it came new off a Boston showroom floor in 1890.  It hadn't been tuned in nearly two decades so it was hard to tell if it was going to be able to be put into playing shape, but he only wanted $350 for it and so we brought it home.  It cost more than twice that much to have it moved to our house and to have it repaired and tuned.  It had a cracked base stringboard, a broken string or two, and all of the pegs needed to be reset and glued in so they would hold tune, but it was worth every penny.  Once it was repaired and set back on its feet, the beautiful tones it produces told us we had made a good choice.  Its holding pitch and with those long strings I can really crank up the v0lume when I need to blow off steam or raise the roof with joy. 

Our piano is worth so much more to me than just the cost of buying and repairing it.  Like my horses, piano is one of the things that I do that makes me feel like my puzzle piece is in the right place.  We make a lot of music in my house, and it is time for the torch to be passed to the next generation. 

My kids got their first piano lessons yesterday.  Its hard to put words to all that I was feeling and thinking of as they each sat at the piano and learned to find Middle C, to identify first through fifth fingers on each hand and to start practicing their first scales.  Amazon Girl plays her scales in a measured temp, wishing to get each note perfectly.  Race Car Man wants to be fast when he has it right and asks many questions about how the keys and the hammers and the felt and the strings work.  They both picked up on the basics pretty quickly. 

I am filled with pride, wistfulness, deep joy, a sense that everything is right with the world. 

We have a piano.  And we are playing it.

 

 P.S.  The photo is of a piano at the recording studio where SG laid tracks for his song.  Mine is prettier.

All the Aftermath

We sit in our lawn chairs along the waterfront or in the parks, children on our laps and holding hands.  We murmur our appreciation as the flowers made of fire burst and throw sparks down into the water against the black night.  We don't notice the dogs, the cats, frightened and running as far and as fast as they can from the cannon shots.  Its not until I see them on my way to work the next day, small and still on the side of the road, that I contemplate that even the things we do which seem so harmless and fun leave a wake.

Yesterday marked a year from the morning when, driving the back roads to work, I found a suicide victim.

Because of a doctor's appointment, my route to work yesterday took me past that dirt road and I could see the top of the hill where last year there was a white car parked with a man's body sprawled behind it.   Every time I drive by that hill I look for a car parked up there my mind grapples with the image of hiking-boot clad feet sprawled on the ground.

When someone dies, life goes on, much the same.  It seems callous, but the world can't stop.  We still get up and drink our coffee in the morning, feed the animals.  I still make the long drive through the hills with the crop dusters going about their business, looking for an open space to pass the onion truck that holds me back.  Yes, life continues on, apparently unperturbed, but if you know where to look, you can find the ripple of loss. 

The visible wake of the living is easy to identify.  We make messes, we create smiles or tears, we make noise, make things, buy things, clean things up and throw things away.  The wake of those that have gone is somewhat inverse, like a sweater turned outside in.  It is measured far more by what is not than by what is.

A year ago I was consumed with trying to learn more about the man who picked a night the cannons booming and the firecrackers popping would disguise the final crack of the shotgun as he took his life.  If I had known then what the year ahead would bring I might have felt a kinship with his brothers as they mourned their loss.

For the rest of my life that still, frozen moment in time when I realized what I was seeing at the top of the hill will be as much a part of the July fireworks as the memories I hold of my brother and I as children, lighting sparklers and showering the driveway with their fire.  Once upon a time we were young and full of life, shouting our joy at the wonder of sight and sound the fireworks created.  We were brave, lighting fuses and waiting until the last minute to dash away to safety.  Once upon a time we left a magnificent debris of color and echoing laughter in our wake.    Once upon a time, a man I never met while he was alive lit bottle rockets with his brothers and covered his ears with his hands when the firecrackers popped and crackled.  Once upon a time, when the sweater was still right-side out.

The day after the fireworks we sweep up the charred bits of paper and the discarded pop cans, we hose the burn marks off the pavement.  We drvie in circles around the neighborhood, calling for our missing dog or cat, hoping they were one of the lucky ones who found a safe place to hide.  All the while we press a palm over our hearts where the ache of grief resides.

 We deal as best we can with all of the aftermath, that which is seen and that which is not.

 

 

 

 

Public service announcements:

**If you or someone you know is suicidal,please call the national suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255)**

**On the fourth of July please keep your dogs and cats indoors**

 

 

 

The first one

It was a blue Chevy truck, standard cab.   It had cloth seats with a woven pattern that looked just like the blanket I put under my western saddle.  At 12 I was tall enough to easily reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel at the same time, but not strong enough to pick up and throw a bale of hay.  Dad took me out into our pasture and taught me how to go and stop and turn, and then when we helped various neighhbors with hay, I got to drive the truck while my brother had to help stack it. 

By the time I was 13 and 14 dad would sometimes let me drive the truck on the roads.   Most of our side roads didn't even have stripes on them, they were gravel and tar, compacted into hard shell by the combined weight of cars and trucks and tractors.  At least three or four of the roads on the island started out paved but ended as dirt shortly after you lefour main thruway.  Seven miles of island  to explore.  Seven miles of dirt roads and blackberry bushes and back pastures in my dad's big Chevy truck.

My dream car has never been a flashy convertible or a muscle-bound GTO or a shiny red minivan.  My dream car has always been a truck of my own.

My ex had one, briefly, a truck he couldn't afford for a job he couldn't keep.  It wasn't mine, and it wasn't much use.  It was shiny and had leather seats and a cover on the back and a carpeted bed so that you couldn't put much of anything in it.  It wasn't a truck in the sense of really being a truck.  It was a showpiece.  It could tow a trailer but I couldn't afford the kind of horse trailer that would do justice to a truck like that. I had a love/hate relationship with it.  It was fun to drive, but it was never going to be what I wanted and needed it to be.  It taunted me from the driveway every time I had to have someone deliver hay to me.  You ca-an't have me!  You ca-an't use me! 

Shut up, Useless, I would fire back.

In this life, a girl needs a truck of her own.  A truck that can haul hay and kids and fence posts, pull a horse trailer or a flatbed trailer.  A truck both useful and tough.  Pretty is as pretty does; this farm girl believes that there's nothing more useless than a truck that is so pretty and expensive that you can't do anything to it or with it.  Trucks are for working.

This -- THIS -- is a TRUCK.

MY truck.

She's old, she's tough, and she's perfect for me.

 

Goodbye, hello, and letting go.

I can barely recap the month of December without feeling exhausted.   I will say, attempting to not sound trite, sappy or maudlin, that like so many prior years in my life, 2011 started with much promise and contained many surprises, both pleasant and not-so-pleasant.   It was a watershed year, year of epic change. It is a year that I am more than happy to put behind me.

I am sitting on the floor of my living room, coffee cup on my left and mimosa on my right, trying to shake off the effects of last night's wine.  I consider, as I do every year, what it really means when we flip the switch on the ball and a new year begins.  Dates are something artificial that we have imposed on our world to maintain the fiction that we actually control something.  Still, the seasons turn and the earth dies and is reborn every spring.  That promises us that something hopeful is around the corner, even as we suffer through the withering and dying of the winter months.

I had such expectations for 2011, such hope.  And because it is my nature to be hopeful, I have hopes and dreams for this year.  But because I am older and because I now understand more viscerally the nature of life, I feel the need to be cautious as well.  I tighten the reins on my hopes, hold them in check.  And yet...

I have been working with my horse on his collection and his need to charge forward.  He is young and full of energy, and you learn over time that although it seems counter-intuitive, holding your horse back is the surest way to make him feel as though he needs to go faster.  Because he is a prey animal, the more you try to trap him, the more he will try to get free of you.  Over time, if you allow him his freedom, guide him with your legs and your seat and your voice, trust him to be himself, he will trust you enough to relax when you release him and to allow you to check him when that is what you want from him.  He will trust that when you are done needing him to stop that you will let him go.  You will find, together, a harmony and a partnership wherein you don't need to hold him back and he doesn't need to get away from you.  And inside that bond of trust and respect, you will both grow.

In the documentary Buck, Buck Branaman says that our relationships with horses reflect the issues in our lives.  As we develop our skills to read and respond to our horse and our ability to establish his trust and his respect, so we hone our maturity in all other areas of our life.  If you can stand on the ground with nothing in your hands and ask a 1500 pound animal to back up with nothing but your energy and intent, and he does, there is nothing in your life that you cannot approach with the same energy and intent.  The first thing that is needed is that you know what you want your horse to do.  The second thing is to understand how you tell him that in a way that he will understand.  Lastly, you need to apply only as much pressure as is required to convey your request.  The moment that he complies, you release the pressure and reward the horse.

So it is in our everyday life.  Know who you are and what you need to accomplish.  Apply as much energy and intent as required and relax that pressure when it is not needed.  How much time have I wasted in my 46 years apply pressure to situations when it was not necessary? 

Something within me wants me to be cautious about my hopes and expectations for this year.  The child within me who was given away, the woman within me who struggled to find herself within a marriage that was wildly out of control, the woman who suffered unexpected and devastating loss, they think that they need me to hold the reins tighter on my hopes. 

The woman within me who has learned to appreciate what is good,who has experienced unexpected and incredible joy, and who has learned to release the pressure gathers them all close and tells them, "it will be okay.  You can let go."

Yes, there will be sorrow.  There will be pain.  There will be days when I fail to do and fail to be.  There will be great loss.  But there will also be great love and great joy, great success and great contentment for me, for my husband and children, for my family and my friends.  For us all.

And so I let go of the check and I allow the hope to blossom fully.  I will not temper it with caution.  I will hope.

I let go.

 

Today's post brought to you by the wonders of cold medicine

I shudder to think of what I'd feel like right now without the bubbly goodness of Alka Seltzer Plus cold medicing roiling through my tired veins.  Even on the sauce, my nose is running, I"m sneezing like someone's sick idea of a cartoon joke and every time I blow my nose, the goop in my left nostril tries to exit via my eyelid.

I managed to make it to work, though.  I'm sure my coworkers appreciate the plague I'm spreading via every doorknob.

Image courtesy of  US National Library of Medicine

Once when I was in high school I had a sinus infection that spread into my eyes.  It wasn't pinkeye, it was a sinus infection, and every time I would blink my right eye, a think film of yellowish-green goo would spread itself over my eyelid, almost completely obscuring my vision.  So attractive.

In a way, I'm grateful for the fuzzy wooziness of my brain right now.  It provides an insulating blanket between me and life. 

I just managed to get a new evaluation appointment set up for my little guy with a psychiatrist in a couple of weeks.   That's unheard of around here, this doctor and most of the others have a 3 month wait for new patients, but we managed to call right after somebody cancelled so we got lucky.  Lucky is a rather dubious term, but lucky it is, to get in before the end of year while our deductibles are all met, lucky to see the doctor who already knows him because he treats my daughter too, lucky to have a teacher who communicates so well on what she sees in the classroom so that there's no disconnect between what we think is going on and what is actually happening during the school day.  He's still struggling.  He's in the right place, no doubt, but still struggling.  And the teacher is kind of surprised that he doesn't have a certain diagnosis, because behaviorally he is so similar to the other kids in her class that have that particular issue.   I had ruled it out before because there were a couple of symptoms that didn't seem to be a match, but looking at it more than a year later with kindergarten behind us and current behaviors in our face, I'm shocked it didn't stand out for me before now. 

I don't want to put it out here yet, because with kids a lot of issues that might seem like one thing can actually be something else.  So I'm going to try to just be patient and open-minded and see what the eval results tell us, then we go forward from there. 

All I really care about, ultimately, is that we know enough to provide him the right kind of  support.  It doesn't matter whether he has diagnosis A, B or C -- it is what it is, all that changes is how we help him cope.

I spent the obligatory hour on the phone with three different people at the insurance company yesterday, only to end up with a referral to a psychiatrist who, as it turns out, doesn't actually do pediatrics.  But that landed us with the resident psych at the center who does, and we already know him, so that should be good, right?    Still, its frustrating.  We're also being assigned to a dedicated team by the insurance company who are supposed to provide me with as many local resources as they can find for me within a week. 

Fortunately, my wine rack is well stocked right now, its a Friday night,  and the kids are at their dad's for a few days.  I have some time for a pity-party before I need to lift my chin up and buckle my seat belt.  Of course, with the cold medicine I'm not really sure I'll need the wine, and with a clogged schnozz I probably wouldn't enjoy it anway. 

 

 

Picking Scabs

I find myself circling in the center of the room, holding patterns, avoiding the loss swept into the corners.  So much pain there, so little of it truly resolved.  I pushed it away to forget it, and this new life keeps asking me to sift through those painful memories and feel them all over again, this time really feel them, so I can grieve them and let them go.

I like the center, I like the pretending part where even though I was hurt, I was tougher than the hurt and the pain didn't really touch me.  I like the middle of the room where I imagine that these things today are not monsters I helped create but that they are all somebody else's fault.  I fear getting lost down the rabbit hole of black, jagged edges where everything I was supposed to be able to trust in wasn't ever really real.  I don't want to be confronted with those feelings yet.  I wanted to wait to deal with them, wait forever as if that's all it would take to make them less painful.

That's the tricky thing about them.  You would think that time would blunt them, burn down the hard and sharp parts, soften the clout to the side of my head and ease the squeeze of the fist on my heart.  And then I find that no, there has been not one iota of change in those feelings of helplessness and grief and anger and excruciating pain.  Not one shred of lessening of the feeling that it wouldn't have happened if I had been better, if I had less ugly, less messy, less self-absorbed. 

Thousands of miles between you and I and there's no comfort to be found, no shoulder to hide my face in, no enabler to help me pretend the past isn't real and that now and the tomorrow is all there ever was or ever will be.  No strong hand to hold to reassure me that this time its different, that you are not the other one.  Every shattered nerve, every thread of anxiety that loops itself through my gut adds more miles to what already exists between us.  But really, its only me putting them there. 

Where do I find the balance between unfocusing enough to make the time pass more quickly and crawling into the hole with old grief and letting it burn its way out of my core?  How do I keep myself from dropping - no, throwing down - the lines of connection so that we can still be reached?

Trust comes so hard for me.  No, you are not the other. I know that.   Never have I had any reason to do anything other than trust you. But the ugly voice from the corners reminds me:  There was a time when I didn't have any reason not to trust him, either.  Open and transparent-seeming eyes looked straight at me, reasonable voices comforted me, soothed me and fed me buckets of steaming lies.  Which part is the part where I can distinguish between the real and the construct?  

And so I avoid the corners.  Let the things swept there lie a while longer.  

Wish you well

 

The thin, cold skies of November are filled with wisps of smoke from all the burning leaves.  Hands thrust into my pockets, face tucked into my turtleneck to save my chin from frostbite, I walk determinedly ahead.  I consider my dogged persistence in not sitting still one minute longer than I am required to, and it begs comparison to...then. 

I do not regret my going.  That open door beckoned and for far too long I told the longings of my heart to be still and abide.  I pled with the angels for the fortitude to withstand it, all of it.  I looked at the earnest, eager faces of my children and begged God for something to change so that we could all just be happy.  Still, the gap between the threshold and the road whispered to me of promise, of freedom, a path whereby I might find my escape.

I struggled with the wanting.  The dark angel on my other shoulder wrapped her small claws around the top of my ear and said Illusion.  Its wrong to go.  Stay and suffer. 

The process of setting aside my doubts was a process of years, not days or weeks or months.  At long last, the final drawn breath of what might have once been love, and then...freedom.

With faith and hope I pulled on the thread of possibility and it unwound sparkling into a new life.  I began to stand ever taller, remembering my dreams.  Welcoming possibility.  I put one foot in front of the other and what began as a slow trudge became a brisk walk, a run.  Sometime along the way I found myself.  Loved myself.  Forgave myself. Stumbled upon the one person whose need to heal matched mine.

Like hand in glove, our hurts and our love met in perfect harmony.  In one shining moment of grace I let the refuse of the past burn in the steel barrel with the November leaves, gone into smoke and blown away.  There is no need to dwell there, no time to be filled with regret or loss.

We did what we did.

We are who we are.

I am loved.  I am happy.

I wish you well.

My dragon has polka dot wings

The mother of my first husband was the embodiment of the term "crafter."  She could make a basket out of leftover yard clippings, a doll out of cardboard toilet rolls, and cook a five-course meal from a refrigerator with nothing more in it than old butter and a couple of moldy apples.  Everytime she visited she wanted to go to the craft store.  From those excursions, I developed a serious case of craft-store guilt.  I couldn't go into a craft store without feeling like I should be doing something with the things they sold there.  But I could never settle on just one craft.  I toyed with jewelry-making a few times, I had this great idea a couple of years ago to start making things with wine corks.  I've tried scrapbooking, knitting, origami, rug-making, macrame, crocheting and painting wooden knick-knacks.  Not a damn thing has stuck. 

I don't really suck at crafts, I just never finish them.  Or I do one or two projects, they turn out really nice, but my interest in them is over. 

My pregnancies were mostly unremarkable, with the possible exception of the size of my gargantuan butt, but they were a time that will always be unforgettable and special to me.  After I knew I was having first my daughter, and then my son, my craftiness revived itself for a brief time.  I hand-made both of their birth announcements with heavy card-stock, stamps, ribbon, knick-knacks and a glue gun.  After each birth, during my maternity leave, I made a shadow box for them.  In it I put their hospital picture and their birth announcement, their baby booties and caps, and some blue or pink baby things from the scrapbooking section of the craft store.  I loved making them.  Loved making them for my children to have.

My children will leave me with far more physical mementos of their presence in my life than I will ever leave with them.  My office is covered with drawings, pictures, school craft projects, magnets, hand-made frames.  Colored pieces of paper cut into the shape of hearts and tied together with yarn.  Paintings and crayon drawings.  A beautiful picture of a dragon and a story to go with it from a second grade art project.

 

I have one wall at home that I use as an art gallery.  I bought some clear acrylic frames, and every couple of months or so I pick out the most colorful and interesting drawings or art projects and I place them inside the frame and put them up on the wall.  The old drawings go into a steam trunk that used to belong to my grandfather.  Its the same trunk where my own mother kept the best of my drawings from preschool through high school graduation.  Someday my children will go through this trunk and relive their childhood.   They will, if they want to, get to have some of those pictures and report cards and craft projects to show their own children.  But there will always be a box of their things with me, for as long as I breathe.  A box where I can look through my treasures, read their words, see their smiling faces.  At 10 and 7 they have already given me a lifetime of memories.

My ex finally collected his things from my home this week.  I had forgotten that the list of things we agreed on splitting included those shadow boxes.  It bothered me at the time that he wanted one of them, but so much else was going on, I was tired and worn out from the stress and conflict and I forgot to address it.  So the movers were taking the piano and the last of his things from my garage, and he asked about the box.  I didn't know what to say.  I went and got one of them.  I gave it to him.  Tried not to cry in front of him.

I was finally able  to put into words what I couldn't say then. 

That shadow box was never meant for you or for I to keep.  I didn't put my heart into making them only to keep them for myself.  Please put C's box in a safe place so that someday when he grows up he will have it. 

To remember that he once was very small and that his mama loved him very much.