Some pics from my garden

Black-eyed Susans (Rudbekia) were a friend’s favorite and I imagine he would love this early-blooming variety.

Early-blooming black-eyes Susans (Rudbekia)

My enclosed sunporch had to come down, which required moving one of my perenniel beds. The daisies got spread out along a side fence and seem quite content.

Daisies along the side fence

The purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) that got moved are late in blooming, but this one took up residence among the black-eyed Susans a few years ago (and I forgot to move it–next year).

Purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) among the black-eyes Susans

This phlox had been dwarfed by the daisies when it was next to the sunporch. I hope it will thrive in this new spot with room to grow.

Swamp milkweed (Asclepias Incarnata) is one of the butterfly attractors in my yard.

Swamp milkweed

What the future will bring

I learned to sew in Home Economics class when I was eleven years old, and I continued to sew for the next 40 years—until I got a job that required travel more than half of the year. When I was at home, I had too much catching up to do to sit and sew.

For me, sewing requires dedicated time and a certain state of mind. I need to be able to focus on what I am making. Sewing gives me the most pleasure when I can spend an hour or two (or more) at my sewing machine.

Knitting has taken up some of the space I would have devoted to sewing; gardening has taken up some as well. They are both creative outlets for me, but they are not sewing.

Sewing was spiritual for me. I thought it was almost miraculous that I could take a rectangular piece of fabric and in as little as a half hour, turn that piece of fabric into a skirt. The idea of something being transformed into something else spoke to me of God’s creating from nothing and of God’s being able to reshape us (I love the image of God as a potter, creating something from a lump of clay).

I have other hobbies I can do while doing something else (I can knit while watching television, for example, or read a book while I am in a waiting room) but sewing requires its own space and time without distractions.

By the time my friend Jim got brain cancer, I hadn’t done any serious sewing for about ten years. We had not talked about my sewing, so I was surprised when, a few days before he died, he said, “I hope you sew again.” It seemed to come out of left field, but when I reflect on it now, I can see what he saw—my life was fuller when I sewed. I was more myself with that creative outlet.

But since he died ten years ago, I still have not started sewing again.

Then one day in France three months ago, I had the thought, “I want to sew.” A few days later, I was in a baby shop looking at hand-sewn bibs, and again I thought, “I want to sew.”

Ironically, that morning at prayer, two Scriptures had spoken to me:

Isaiah 43:16-17: Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see I am doing something new, and

Philippians 3:14: Just one thing, forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead….

Sewing is from my past; could it also be in my future?

Is it time for me to return to this hobby of old, even to see if it is still something that brings me joy?

Do you have a hobby from your youth that still calls to you? That still engages your imagination and fosters a sense of creativity?

Unfinished

After my dad retired, my parents spent winters in Florida. Without her home and family to occupy her time, my mother took up a variety of hobbies, including painting. Lessons were offered at the community center in their RV park, and my mother became a prolific painter.

After she stopped going to Florida, my mom set up her easel in an upstairs bedroom at home and painted through her Michigan winters.

When we were clearing out her house last month, we found a painting she had not finished.  

I took it home.

Something in this painting speaks to me—perhaps just because it is unfinished. It reminds me that we all leave things unfinished.

And I am not talking just about death.

When I left my job in July, I left plenty of things unfinished, projects for someone else to complete—or not. Once we are gone, someone else will pick up our works-in-progress and determine their fate.

I think that every time we make a change something goes undone.

With my work, I had to walk away without knowing the outcome of unfinished projects. I also walked away from work relationships—some old and some just beginning—leaving them without knowing where they might have gone, how they might have developed.

Every letting go is practice for the final letting go.

While looking for something in a closet a few months ago, I came across a white box I did not recognize. Inside was a knitting project I had started maybe fifteen years ago and had set aside when I switched jobs. The new job zapped all my energy, and I stopped knitting for a few years. Once I started knitting again, I hadn’t remembered this sweater, and it has sat unfinished all these years.

I was delighted to find it, and it brought back memories of a trip to Seattle and my visit to a well-known yarn shop where I bought this yarn.

Like my mother’s unfinished painting, this sweater reminds me of my own unfinishedness, of being a work-in-progress.

I am comfortable with being in process, comfortable living in the in-between spaces. Someone recently suggested I am standing on a precipice, and I agreed. My mother has died, and I have left my work—two cornerstones of my life, gone. What comes next is not entirely clear, and I want to stay open to the possibilities.

For now, though, I am trying to stay in that in-between space, where grief intersects with hope.

Two Lists

The past two years have been very stress-filled for me, and I have often felt “not myself.” I have lost track of the number of times I have said, “I am just not myself.” Sometimes it is connected to daily activities, like being almost incapable of parallel parking (something I used to do so well I often thought it could be my “talent” in a contest). Other times it is the absence that I notice.

For example, I have long been faithful at sending cards to family and friends for birthdays and other occasions. I love the whole experience of browsing the racks of cards, sometimes laughing out loud and ultimately finding the perfect card. But, over the past two years, I have rarely entered a card store or even remembered many of the occasions that once filled my calendar. When I realize I have missed someone’s birthday, I think, “That is not like me”—and then I forgive myself. I have had other things on my mind.

Baking is another thing I love to do, and I would usually have chocolate-chip cookies on hand at all times. I would bake banana muffins year-round, zucchini bread in summer and my Christmas baking would begin on Thanksgiving weekend. But my cookie sheets, muffin tins and bread pans have not seen the inside of the oven for a very long time. I have settled for store-bought cookies for the past two years, which is definitely not like me.

At some point recently, I realized that I have been keeping two lists in my head: One was titled “like me” and the other, “not like me.”

For the better part of the last two years, the scales have tipped in favor of “not like me.” Every missed birthday and store-bought cookie reminded me that I was not myself. The list also includes my lack of exercise, knitting, gardening—all those hobbies and habits that shape my daily life and give expression to who I am. I don’t even take my daily vitamins any more.
I have not been myself.

So, when I not only remembered three birthdays in July, but actually bought cards and sent them (and on time), I noted how “like me” that felt. Two of the birthday people even received gifts (ok, so they were gift cards I bought on-line, but still…).

I moved into my new house a few days ago and went shopping to stock my pantry. I walked down the baking aisle and optimistically picked up basic supplies, thinking of the day when the aroma of fresh-baked cookies fills my new home. On that day I will know that the scales are tipping and I am becoming myself again.