Patchwork Projects

I have finished making the patchwork part of one of my quilting projects.  I am going to take this square and make it into a pillow.  I bought a plain pillow and am making a zipper pillow case.

Sounds easy, right?

Before I started, I had no idea how to pull this together, and was terrified.  Instead of having my mom, aunts, sisters, cousins and grandmothers teach me how to do this, I have the internet, where I can watch someone else's mother, grandmother, aunt and sister show me how to make a zippered pillow case on YouTube.  This video has 11,606 views as of today.  At least three of those are my views.  Once I saw this video, I thought, "I can do this.  No problem."  Thankfully, I could watch the video several times to make sure I got it right, which was necessary.  Placing a zipper is some spacial reasoning task that I seem to fail when asked to do it alone.  I can figure it out right after I watch the video, but it escapes me two days later.

Pinning the zipper together.

I skipped the step where she casually mentions finishing the edges.  I have no clue how to do that.  I googled "finishing edges" and there is a guy--a dude--with what look like prison tats* on his hands showing how to finish an edge without a serger.

All of these folks have found a new use for the GoPro cameras.  Heck with skiing in the back country or going down some crazy double black.  Forget mountain biking over a cliff or hang gliding.  GoPros are awesome for sewing demonstrations.  I imagine these people sitting there with bike helmets on or some other attachment sewing and narrating away.  I digress.

What helped me get over my fear of pulling something together when I have no idea what I am doing?  Buying the stuff, and leaving it on the floor of my bedroom, the plain pillow in the plastic bag mocking me to finish.  The sock monkey fabric was too cute to let it collect dust until I have grandchildren in 20 years.  I had to finish.  When I was halfway done, I bought more material for my next project so I could start right away, ala Hemingway always leaving a sentence unfinished at the end of the day so he would have someplace to start when he sat back down to write again in the morning.  I could finish one project, and slide right into the next without interruption.

Thank goodness for YouTube.  I don't think I'd make it without the kind folks who share their wisdom through the electronic ether.  I am not on the plains of Nebraska in 1870 where there is no one to ask how to do this.  A city slicker like me learned how to bind a quilt from a woman in Missouri and another in South Dakota.  Am I the only one?  No.  Both videos have nearly 500,000 views.

Not that I have anything against books.  Quilting books are the best.  I have lots of books on quilting and sewing, which are fantastic for ideas on starting.  They are like quilt porn.

And I finished.  Hooray!

Fox and the finished zippered pillows.

Fox and the pink sock monkey quilt.

Sock monkey quilt for Fox for the chair in my office.

* I shouldn't tease, on so many levels.  I wouldn't tease a woman for wanting to be an engineer or in the military.  I'd say, "Go for it, sister!"  I also seriously doubt this guy was in prison.   If he were, wow, that is awesome that he has turned his life around such that he is teaching people to sew.  And those tattoos might be covering surgical scars.  Godspeed, Mr. Burly Sew!

Dystopia

The Boy is reading The Giver by Lois Lowry.  I remember reading this book for a book club when I lived in St. Louis.  In December, we chose a children's novel for ease, speed and fun.

The Giver was not fun.  I know lots of people love this book, and for good reason, but I was not one of those people.  I am not a fan of dystopian literature, yet all through grade and middle school I read about Jewish girls whose lives were impacted by the Holocaust.  I didn't need dystopian literature.  Nowadays, that seems to be the main theme in young adult novels and school curriculums: alternate realities where the world stinks.  The Hunger Games.  Divergent.  

The Boy broke down and cried today.  He cried for ebola.  He cried for a four year old child who shot a three year old who is now at Harborview.  He cried for an unarmed boy who was killed by police.  

"Why did he have to kill him?  Couldn't the police have used a taser or pepper spray?  Broken his arms?  Shoot him in the leg?"

The boy's solution to all of this needs some work: vaporize the world so there is no more pain and suffering.  Stop humans from hurting each other by just getting rid of all of us.  Not quite a real solution or one Gandhi would have proposed.  I can see how rage kicks in where sorrows leaves off.

He wants to cancel the newspaper so we don't have to read about anymore bad stuff, about starfish dying from infections, or possible earthquakes.  

Jack thought the boy might have a meltdown when he got to the end of The Giver.  Nope.  He had a meltdown reading The Seattle Times.  "I am an eleven year old boy," he said.  "I have no power to change anything.  I can't make this world a better place."  He needs to read to the end of The Giver, where a young boy in a dystopian world makes a change.  Dystopian novels help us use fake worlds to find real solutions.

"No one will listen to me or take me seriously because I am a kid." 

I am listening.  As hard as it is to see my son come to grips with tragedies in the world, I listened.

As he went to bed, he found a book he said would make him happy:  Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh.  Interesting choice, as this is a comic book written by a woman who suffers from depression.   Her goal in writing was to make people laugh.  She tried to be as funny as possible.  

Perhaps this is the medicine this sorrowful little boy needs.

Pearls, Part III

I still like my pearls.  One of the downsides is that I will likely need new clothes.  My current clothes are kind of worn and tattered.  The pearls glow and shine and look sparkly and new.  They make my five year old green jacket with the worn out cuffs look kind of hideous.  

The pearls also make my skin look older, as the pearls look younger than me.  I don't look dewy anymore.  I am not sure when I lost that youthful, radiant skin, but I can tell it has been gone for a while when I see my skin next to the pearls.

Pearls, Part II

It was almost exactly a year ago (Nov. 15, to be precise) that I wrote about pearls.  Jack was considering giving me a strand, and I hemmed and hawed.  Bottom line:  I didn't want to spend the money and I wasn't sure I would wear them, even though I've worn pearl earrings nearly everyday since I was sixteen.  I have a few other pairs of earring, but I always go back to the pearls.  To say I wouldn't like a strand of pearls is like saying someone loves a fancy little appetizer, but then would refuse to eat it as a main course.  Sure, sometimes there is too much of a good thing.  Other times, as Mae West said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful."

Jack was in Japan for twelve days, and he returned with a strand of pearls for me.  Pearls are the unofficial national jewel of Japan, so it was a fitting place to get something that nice.

And they are lovely, more lovely than I imagined.  I've never worn a strand of real pearls before.  I have a couple of decent fake strands, if there is such a thing.  These feel warm around my neck, as if they are absorbing my body heat and giving it back to me.  The care instructions for the pearls recommends keeping them in the box they came in, as it is covered in a chamois which prevents scratches.  There is silicon oil cloth to be used wipe them off after each wearing.  I am supposed to get them restrung once a year.

My guess that much of the cost that goes into the strand isn't so much that each individual pearl is so special, but rather that finding so many so perfectly round and so similar in size and color is the challenge.  I imagine the work of sorting through thousands of pearls to find those that match.  I suppose that is the hard part of much of life, whether it is starting a company and hiring people, or finding a life partner.  Finding things that complement and work well together is hard.  I wonder if  the matching and sorting is done by humans, or if this ancient craft has been taken over my machines?

Aside from bringing me back an very nice gift, Jack came back a changed man from this trip.  Unlike the trips he took in the spring, this one he came home looking forward to being home.  He was lonely, and missed me and the kids.  For the past year and half, I scoffed at the notion that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Now I am beginning to think it might be true.

Or maybe the pearls changed him.  Maybe the act of picking something special that matched me made him realize what he came so close to losing.  After he gave them to me, he said, "I should have gotten for you a year ago.  Maybe we wouldn't have had to go through the past months of anguish if I had."

Present Tense, Torture and Bicycles Wheels

I am digging back into writing my book about my brother's battle with schizophrenia.  Hooray!  Not.  The story is actually tragic and hard to write about.  It got me pondering about the idea of a tortured writer.  Are writers tortured to start, or is the process of writing torture, causing anguish and angst?  I am voting for the latter.  Would I be happier if I didn't write?  That I cannot say, but I know I might be  better off floating in the cloud of denial instead of looking into the belly of grief and despair.

One nice thing about this blog is that I get to write in the present tense.  In the memoir, it is mostly about digging up the past.  I feel more alive writing about the immediate yesterday, today and tomorrow.

One nice thing about the blog is that I get to keep my bicycle wheels.  A writer friend asked me to review something she had written for her book.  It was a lovely piece, but it didn't fit in the scope of her story.  It was a bicycle wheel -- it was perfectly functional for a bike, but she was building a car.  They bike wheel wouldn't work, so she had to get rid of it.  I think one of the hard thing for writers is ironically to get positive feedback.  Sometimes, something can be well written and compelling, but it might not fit as part of a larger work, so it needs to go.*  They need to get rid of the bicycle wheels.


*  Unless you are Victor Hugo, which no modern writer is.  He could fit anything into the scope of Les Miserables, and he did.  The scope of the story is about the miserable ones: the orphan, the slave and the prostitute.  I just finished reading twenty pages of an essay on slang in the middle of his masterpiece.  He discusses slang as to how it unifies subgroups of society.  And yes, bizarrely, it fit.

Boys in the Backseat and All About the Bass

Do eleven year old boys know more about women than women?   It was my turn to do the soccer carpool the other night.  I had three eleven year old boys in the backseat.  I usually am running through my mental grocery list as they talk about rockets exploding or something like that.  Yesterday, Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass came on the radio.  I've heard about 2.5 times anytime I've been in the car for more than five minutes in the past two weeks, which means it is on all of the time.

"I hate this song," said one of the boys.

"So do I," another said.  (I couldn't tell who was talking half the time, so here is the back and forth.)

"I don't get it.  She is insulting skinny people in one sentence and then says 'You're perfect from bottom to top.'  Doesn't that apply to skinny people, too?"

"And the woman who sings this song is skinny herself.  I don't know why she is singing about being fat when she isn't fat."

"This song is stupid."

"You know something else that is stupid?  That Katniss in The Hunger Games would like Peeta.  Seriously."  For those who don't know the series, Peeta is a baker's son who is kind of wimpy.  Gale is the super hot yet sensitive hunter.

"Well, Gale did die, so she had no choice.  She had to marry Peeta because of television."

"That doesn't make sense. The Capital ended, so she shouldn't have to marry Peta."

"I can't really say.  I couldn't read the third book of The Hunger Games."

So, do these eleven year old boys know more about women than women?  They don't get my Meghan Trainor is singing about how she doesn't fit the ideal feminine form, especially in a field littered with half naked women dancing while singing.  (See: Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, et al.)  Not that those to women aren't also talented, they are, but their appeal is definitely linked to their shape and willingness to flaunt it.  These boys will either grow-up and change their minds as puberty hits them like a brick, or perhaps we are living in some post-feminist universe where boys don't view women as objects.  Or, maybe they do see women, but not the way women see themselves.  Maybe Trainor's mother was right, "Mama said boys like a little more booty to hold at night."

As for the Katniss, Gale and Peeta triangle, I am right there with the boys.  I had no idea why Katniss wouldn't go for the strong and hot hunter.  Instead, she went with a wimp.  Really?  The boys saw this from miles away-- that doesn't happen in real life, nor do they want it to.  They want the girl to go for the strong guy, not the wuss.  Vulnerable and sensitive does not mean a guy can't be strong.  Girls can be strong and still like a strong guy.  It doesn't mean they are weak.  The boys in the car actually like Katniss.  They want her to end up with the better guy.

Four Soccer Games and a Funeral

The Boy had an indoor soccer game this weekend.  I ran into a mom I who has a daughter the same age as the Boy.  One of the dad's on Peter's team bought a pitcher of beer to share amongst the parents.  I offered this mom a cup from the community beer.

"No thanks," she said.  "I've had a horrible weekend."

"What happened?" I asked.

"We've had four soccer games this weekend.  Wait -- five," she said.  This alone is enough to make a parent want to drink, but not so much that they don't want to drink.

"I went to a funeral for one of my son's classmates," she said.  This was a fourth grade boy who attended the same elementary school as The Boy and Claire Adele.*  This boy was diagnosed with leukemia and died ten days later.  He was an otherwise healthy, athletic boy who one day felt a little tired.  The first idea was that he had the flu, but no, it was far worse.

"On second thought, I'll have some of that beer," the mom said and she got a glass.

"How was the funeral?" I asked.

"Awful," she said.  "The mother moaned the whole time.  I couldn't take my eyes off of her."

I have been the starring role of a mom at a funeral for her own child.  I was in too much of a stupor to moan.  Moaning would have implied that I had grasped the gravity of the situation, felt the pain.  I was still numb at my daughter's funeral.  Ada was a full-term stillbirth, and the pain and acceptance of her death came in waves.  Most of my moaning was in private.

Even though I have buried a child, I cannot imagine what this mom is experiencing.  Her son was on a soccer team.  Does she still go to those games and watch other kids play?  Her son recently switched schools.  Does she still volunteer there?  Does she give her older son's clothes to the younger one?  Does she pass on the lego collection?  What does she do at bedtime?  Who does she nag to take a shower?   Her son's birthday we be marked by sadness, as will be the anniversary of his death.  This mom not only lost her son--which is horrible by itself, she lost part of her job as a mom and her community.

I can't even imagine.  I've never met this woman, yet she is in my thoughts and prayers.  Please send a few warm thoughts in this woman's direction.

* The Big E wants her name changed on my blog.  Her new name is Claire Adele.

Missing the Big E

I am having a hard time with Jack being gone overseas for an extended trip.  My daughter took a trip to Japan this summer, and asked me if I missed her during the trip.  I think she might have been worried that I was sitting around moping while she was gone like I am with Jack out of town.

No, Big E, I did not miss you while you were in Japan, at least not the same as I do your father.  I was glad you were gone, not for my sake, but for yours.  I was thrilled for you on your behalf, more than you knew.  I went on an overseas trip when I was in middle school and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.  You were annoyed every time I said, "When I went to France in middle school..."  Nevertheless, I was glad that I could give you your version of the same experience I had.  When your father, brother and I were out and someone would ask "Where's the Big E?" I was happy to talk about your trip.

Did I miss you?  When you were gone, I'd check Facebook and Instagram before I peed in the morning to see if there were pictures posted of your trip.  I would check several times a day to see if there was anything new.  I would think about what you were eating and if you liked the food.  I wondered how your home-stay was going.  Was I sad?  Not at all.

I knew you were gone, and I knew you would be coming home.  I knew you would change, and change for the better from the trip.  This is a trip you will remember for your entire life, and no one can ever take those memories and experiences away.  The trip was a gift from your father and I to you.  The biggest part of that gift was freedom, independence and trust.  We trusted that you could manage and take care of yourself almost 5,000 miles from home.  

With your father, I miss companionship.  While I enjoy your company, I know my goal is for you to someday lead an independent life.  With marriage, the goal is not independence, it is to grow together.

Love or Money; or Failure to Thrive

I ran into a friend in the bookstore yesterday.  I hadn't seen in him ages.  He didn't know the story about Jack and I, and didn't I really want to tell him.  I had been avoiding him for the past several months.  But then I was in a bookstore after I dropped Jack off at the airport for his twelve day trip overseas, which he insists is ten days with two days of travel.  (To me at home alone with the kids, it is twelve days.)

With this friend, I got on the topic of Jack's workaholism.  He could relate, knowing quite a few workaholics himself.  He had previously heard about Jack's grueling work schedule, and never questioned how difficult it is.

(By the way, I think of this guy as an old woman.  If you knew him, you'd understand why.  He is a friendly, chatty, curmudgeon.)

This friend encouraged me to stay in my marriage, and vigorously so:  "You have kids!  If you get divorced, you'll be broke!  You have kids!  There are no other good men out there!  It is like musical chairs and the only chairs left are the broken ones!  You have kids!"

I tried telling him this marriage had gone beyond sustainability, that it is impossible for two married people to live independent lives and pretend that everything is normal.  Our marriage had died, and now it is on life support.

"Do your own thing.  Find something you love.  You don't need the money, so get a small part-time job.  Start your own business," he replied.  He is right, yet I still have this nagging feeling of being trapped and/or paralyzed.  I don't know why.  I should move on and find my own happiness.  I should do things that I love, with or without Jack.  And that is the scary part for me.  Somewhere deep inside, I still love him, but it hurts to love someone who isn't present.  I am a writer and introvert.  I need a quiet, constant companion.  I am not thriving with a partner who works this horrible schedule.

"Nature abhors a vacuum," I said.  I didn't say the loneliness is crushing.  I didn't say that I tried to live independently, but it was a miserable failure.  Emotional needs need to be met.  Humans aren't programmed to live with out affection, admiration and attention.

Which got me to thinking.  Most people get married for love, but stay married for money.  We get married for companionship, love, affection, attention, fun.  Some people can keep this going for decades.  Other marriages slide into an easy comfortability, or ebb and flow.  Others die from lack of oxygen.  All marriages need regular tending to, and need a balance of give and take.

Earlier today, I read on a blog "Givers are happy.  Takers are miserable."  This is not entirely true.  Givers are often happy because they get something in return for spreading joy and happiness in the world.  Often, their gifts are reciprocated.  But what happens when they are not?  What happens when the person or people they give to aren't appreciative?  What if those people just take, or do all their giving to other people?   Doesn't that make the first giver a little testy or put out?  Having been there, I would say yes.

So love dies in a marriage.  When it dies, it often isn't planned, like a murder, but through failure to nurture and tend to the garden.  The plants aren't watered, and they fail to thrive.  They might grow a little bit, but do not reach their full potential.  The plant might be reasonably alive, but it might not flower, bloom or bear fruit.  So here we are, in a marriage that was not thriving, where loyalty, honesty and trust were not present, where one party lacks introspection and self-awareness.  Yes, he is working to get them back, but then he disappears for ten days or twelve days or whatever.

So we stay married for economic security, and emotional security is an afterthought.  But I am too high maintenance to live like this.  I need emotional support.  I need companionship.  What happens when my companion isn't present?  I would like to think I am like those pioneer women who can go it alone, but I am not.

Actually, the pioneer women didn't go it alone.  They were part of a team.

A picture the Boy took of me when we were walking Fox last night.  This has nothing to do with the story above, but I thought it was a nice picture.  We are on the footbridge over the ravine in Ravenna Park.

Love is like a Rechargeable Battery...

I was thinking that love is like a rechargeable battery.  There are lots of metaphors for love.  Some people think of it as a vessel, others a bank account.  I like the idea of a rechargeable battery.  If you don't continually plug it in or nurture it, it will die.  I suppose one could die of thirst if a water container was empty, or one could be out in the cold if the bank account zeroed out and you couldn't pay rent.  But a battery just stops.

One nice thing about batteries that love doesn't have is a meter.  I can read my phone and laptop to see how much charge I have before it runs down.  (I rarely let my devices get below 70% of a full battery.)  Love doesn't come with a charge level.  It would be nice if it did.

Good Enough

I went to my hairdresser today.  He is a good marker in my relationship with Jack, as Jamie sees me once every few weeks.  I was a wreck of epic proportions when I saw him in early June.  Later in the summer, I was still a mess.  Today he said I seemed almost positive and hopeful, which is ironic since last week I was ready to bail on my marriage.  I was ready to say it was over.

Which leads me to the question: what is good enough?  Jamie pointed out -- and rightfully so -- that is seems that Jack in changing for the better, that he is trying.

But when is it good enough?  He can make small improvements, but how much improvement do I need?  Do I need big, radical changes, or small incremental ones?  I can see that small, incremental changes might be more sustainable, more realistic to maintain than some giant personality overhaul that doesn't stick.

A friend suggested that perhaps I stay in the marriage but find outside companionship.  I would keep the family together, and I would potentially get my emotional needs met.  Win-win, so to speak.  Other societies, like the old British aristocracy, have arrangements like this where marriages are designed to join to households instead of building a romantic and familial partnership. I've read about the times in which Winston Churchill's mother lived.  Companionship outside of the marriage was almost a given.

For me, I don't think this would work.  I don't think I am so self-righteous or moral that I couldn't have an affair.  I have seen the ugly underbelly of affairs, the messy cleanup.  I have a few friends who've had an affair.  For a majority of them, the affairs ended badly.  There was no "happily ever after."  Either their marriages ended up in need of significant repair, or the emotional burden of living a lie was too much.  Regret and remorse were deep.

Part of the idea for me to have an affair--whether an emotional affair or something more--is that it would then be okay for Jack to have an affair.  That is not something I could easily accept.  I've read stories by two women who've had open relationships.  It sounded fine to them until they were left home alone many night knowing their partner was out philandering.  Their misery was profound.  I came into marriage with the expectation that Jack would be my companion, that we wouldn't need to look elsewhere.

I can't live in a relationship where my emotional needs aren't met, nor can find a way to get those primary emotional needs met outside of my marriage.  And I am not talking about the basic needs I have that would be met by friends, family or my kids.  I am talking about the needs that for most people are met by their partner.

Here I am, pounding on my thesis: when will this be good enough?  Based on my own argument, good enough is when my emotional needs are met.  And what does it mean if at the end of the day I still feel lonely in my own marriage?  Then what?

This would be easier if I flat out hated him.  If I hated the way he chews his food, brushes his teeth, or talks to the neighbors.  It would be easier if I disagreed with his political views, how he spends money or if he were a racist.  It would be easier if he were abusive or hostile.  I would leave, no looking back.

But he is not.  Minus the workaholism and its is effects--which by no means are small, he is generally a good guy.

And therein lies my problem.