My day began at 3:30 a.m., when I awoke from a glorious, generous slumber of approximately four hours. Give or take. I was thrilled that I could not go back to sleep, especially given the fact that I have only around ninety-five million things to do today.
An hour-and-a-half (and a cup of coffee) later, I see that someone has posted something in Spanish on my favorite author's page. I burst into tears (whether from nostalgia, longing or sleep deprivation I simply cannot say) at the fact that, after all of these intellectually indolent years as a housewife, I can still read Spanish fairly well. Sometimes I get a nudge that I am not operating in my areas of giftedness. We know that nurturing, while maybe not a gift, is a passion of mine (hence the being home even though my kids have twice my shoe size), but cleaning and organization are not. We know that cooking, while necessary, has never captured my complete fascination to the degree that perhaps it should. Let's move on to sewing.
I decided that, since my husband said that his grandmothers had quilts about the house and the sight of them raised nostalgia, I would go "all-in" and learn how to do it! Hooray! I am going to challenge myself! I am going to make some amazing quilts. Gary will arise and call me "Blessed"!!!
Never mind that I had never flipped the on switch on a sewing machine. Never mind that I have notoriously rotten hand-eye coordination. Never mind any of that! Signed up for a beginner machine quilting class.
The very first three-hour class was a continuing series of disasters for me. We were given little pieces of fabric to practice sewing a straight seam on. At the slightest tap of my foot, my machine seemed to take off like a runaway train, sucking my little slips of fabric in at a bizarre angle. I felt as if my dignity had been yanked under the needle as well, only to emerge on the other side with the pitiful riverbed-crooked seams, as tattered and pockmarked as a bullet-ridden outlaw in the old West. I never got the practice seams done right. Had to move right on to my actual quilt strips. Fun, fun for everyone. At one point my fabric bunched up along the seam. Someone fixed my tension by removing my bobbin (which looked like an obscure part belonging to a one-hundred-year-old Buick) and tinkering with it. Another time there was a tangle of threads and I had no way to accurately report what I had done to cause said tangle. It was as mysterious as the ways of a goat family on a lonely Himalayan mountaintop.
After what felt like seven thousand tries, I had about half of the day's work done. "What you don't get done in class will be homework," announced the instructor. I immediately felt gongs of doom going off in my heart. It was as if someone had said "At this times next week you will be publicly executed." If I could not do the work in class without constant supervision, how on earth would I ever get it done at home?
I cried tears of humiliation, frustration and disappointment on the way to the middle school to pick up my child. I am not giving up learning to machine quilt. I like the idea of challenging myself, of strengthening a part of my brain that is apparently as unused as a frat house library. I am, however, going to try to find some balance.
I know that language is my greatest strength. I am praying for opportunities to strengthen those muscles, as they will allow me to run faster and leap higher with regards to God's plan for the rest of my life than the underlying craft muscles. It will be fun, exhilarating even, to produce a quilt from such a mammoth effort. It will be gratifying and affirming to write things that people read, or to teach others to do so, and to understand that my efforts will be rewarded with a God-inspired destiny. I don't want to be guilty of pursuing my own way and in so doing leaving my obvious gifts on a shelf to collect the dust of regret.
POST SCRIPT: I dropped out of quilting class. Seems the mammoth effort equaled more misery than exhilaration. I get cold chills every time I drive past the quilting shop.
An hour-and-a-half (and a cup of coffee) later, I see that someone has posted something in Spanish on my favorite author's page. I burst into tears (whether from nostalgia, longing or sleep deprivation I simply cannot say) at the fact that, after all of these intellectually indolent years as a housewife, I can still read Spanish fairly well. Sometimes I get a nudge that I am not operating in my areas of giftedness. We know that nurturing, while maybe not a gift, is a passion of mine (hence the being home even though my kids have twice my shoe size), but cleaning and organization are not. We know that cooking, while necessary, has never captured my complete fascination to the degree that perhaps it should. Let's move on to sewing.
I decided that, since my husband said that his grandmothers had quilts about the house and the sight of them raised nostalgia, I would go "all-in" and learn how to do it! Hooray! I am going to challenge myself! I am going to make some amazing quilts. Gary will arise and call me "Blessed"!!!
Never mind that I had never flipped the on switch on a sewing machine. Never mind that I have notoriously rotten hand-eye coordination. Never mind any of that! Signed up for a beginner machine quilting class.
The very first three-hour class was a continuing series of disasters for me. We were given little pieces of fabric to practice sewing a straight seam on. At the slightest tap of my foot, my machine seemed to take off like a runaway train, sucking my little slips of fabric in at a bizarre angle. I felt as if my dignity had been yanked under the needle as well, only to emerge on the other side with the pitiful riverbed-crooked seams, as tattered and pockmarked as a bullet-ridden outlaw in the old West. I never got the practice seams done right. Had to move right on to my actual quilt strips. Fun, fun for everyone. At one point my fabric bunched up along the seam. Someone fixed my tension by removing my bobbin (which looked like an obscure part belonging to a one-hundred-year-old Buick) and tinkering with it. Another time there was a tangle of threads and I had no way to accurately report what I had done to cause said tangle. It was as mysterious as the ways of a goat family on a lonely Himalayan mountaintop.
After what felt like seven thousand tries, I had about half of the day's work done. "What you don't get done in class will be homework," announced the instructor. I immediately felt gongs of doom going off in my heart. It was as if someone had said "At this times next week you will be publicly executed." If I could not do the work in class without constant supervision, how on earth would I ever get it done at home?
I cried tears of humiliation, frustration and disappointment on the way to the middle school to pick up my child. I am not giving up learning to machine quilt. I like the idea of challenging myself, of strengthening a part of my brain that is apparently as unused as a frat house library. I am, however, going to try to find some balance.
I know that language is my greatest strength. I am praying for opportunities to strengthen those muscles, as they will allow me to run faster and leap higher with regards to God's plan for the rest of my life than the underlying craft muscles. It will be fun, exhilarating even, to produce a quilt from such a mammoth effort. It will be gratifying and affirming to write things that people read, or to teach others to do so, and to understand that my efforts will be rewarded with a God-inspired destiny. I don't want to be guilty of pursuing my own way and in so doing leaving my obvious gifts on a shelf to collect the dust of regret.
POST SCRIPT: I dropped out of quilting class. Seems the mammoth effort equaled more misery than exhilaration. I get cold chills every time I drive past the quilting shop.
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