the red Victorian silk, for some reason, very hard to pierce with a needle
The sagas go on and on, don’t they? Started this crucifix series before “the flood”, and why shouldn’t my particular saga have its biblical moments? Because what day doesn’t go by, really, when I’m not looking for redemption in some form or other? I am looking for redemption even on those days when it seems as though I am just trying to get through. I am looking for redemption even on my good days — and by that I certainly don’t mean times when I feel like the master of my fate — but rather I mean days when I have enough wherewithal to entertain the POSSIBILITY of accepting life exactly as it is. But here’s the thing, can one be –
”seeing things and accepting things exactly as they are”
and still find redemption?!! Isn’t wishing for a world in which every mess is an opportunity and every delay, packed with meaning, by DEFINITION, a state of non-acceptance (because, let’s face it, there ARE situations in which there is no silver lining to be found!)
Well, anyway, there D. and I were yesterday, waiting and waiting for ‘the shoulder guy’. It had begun to rain again, a status of weather that, THIS week, provokes a palpable dread. The patients were flying in and out all around us, but D.’s name had not been called at the 50 minute mark (I complained), or at the 65 minute mark (I complained again), until at 75 minutes, after nearly leaving, and after listening to D. ask, “Why am I here?! This is useless”, a few too many times, the assistant called us in. The assistant called us in just moments after I had written in two-inch letters on the intake form, “WAITED 75 MINUTES”, which of course made me wonder — had I written “WAITED 35 MINUTES” on the form 40 minutes earlier, would we have been ushered us in sooner?!! (You begin to see just HOW superstitious I am).
Anyway, I stitched on this piece for awhile, not for one moment asking myself to call in the Christ-energy of patience, or noticing the disparity between image and mood. That’s how irate I was.
I dyed the crocheted thread in onion skin-water
After 10 minutes with the doctor (who apologized so excessively I began to feel a little abashed), we scuttled off to X-ray. And back.
And, OMG, the news was a little shattering (forgive the pun). What first seemed (to me) back in the dead of winter as one in a long series of whinge-fests, and then seemed (to the chiropractor) like a separated shoulder, turned out to have been a fractured collarbone. [YIKES!!!] (Healed, already, I’m happy to report).
So, I apologized to D. (although not excessively). Then, after quietly pointing out that the amount and volume of complaints make it hard for me to pick out any particular one as needing extra intervention, D. and I devised a code for ‘this really, really hurts and I need you to do something about it’. Our code is, “Mom, this is an 8.”
A symbol of the effort in pushing all this fabric around!
This was GOING to be a post about the basement and the progress down there and how the disaster HAS turned into this amazing re-shuffling, re-ordering, and investment in storage units that has me psyched and energized (in other words, it has turned into an OPPORTUNITY). I was going to add something about the dynamics of dependence and understanding one’s personal style of attacking a monumental task (because dear reader, what most of you didn’t know is that my husband was in India for ALL of this, which gave me additional OPPORTUNITIES for learning). Perhaps tomorrow I shall return to that, after another two inches of rainfall, unless, of course, I have my cherry-printed wellies on again and am threading the hose out the back door and trying not to cry.
"ample moisture" indeed
PS What shows up in people’s readers when I ‘update’ post? I tend to write a draft, publish, and then update typo, by typo, and it would embarrass me if EACh of these appears…
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But I think it is a good day for a graduation, if for no other reason than it is the day that graduation is scheduled.
The areas that I had tucked and gathered to shrink the shoulder span of the cardigan cannot be untucked without significant reworking of the sky, so I am edging over the bumps and quilting more than I might otherwise to make the dimples of the surface somewhat uniform.
Here, a piece of the red and white Irish linen dish towel finds a place. Because it was out. Because I needed it.
There are lots of ways for cloth to be useful besides covering our bodies.
Once I determined that this panel would become a birthday gift for K., I consciously selected some clothing to represent his (our) family. That grey paisley wool was a sweater I wore to work last year, which shrunk terribly during a less attentive laundry moment. The blue and white checks were either D’s or C’s pajamas. The denim cuff came from a rejected pair of jeans of K’s (pants which after I cut the cuff of, I tried on – and lo and behind they fit! I will be repairing them for me). A piece of C’s shirt is not yet there, in the mix, but will be.
