It’s not always easy to return to something that has been left dormant and pick up where you left off. Sometimes the sheer work of doing so is daunting, but if you care enough about it, it can be done. You don’t need to even explain why you have set something aside. Sometimes the desire to complete something you have long neglected is enough to allow the universe to bring a long elusive dream to fruition. The degree of desire may not even be all that strong.
After moving from the “wherehouse” to a regular house two years ago, a lot of things that had been put in boxes from previous moves were discovered. (I’ve moved seven times since coming to Alaska nearly 35 years ago.) Among them was a log cabin quilt I began years ago when I worked in a fabric store, before any of my five children were born. The pieced top is over 30 years old, but the fabric looks as good as new, thanks to the fact it was in stored in a banker’s box in a waterproof, unheated shipping container for all those years. Both the darkness and the cold protected the fibers. As a birthday gift, my best friend and awesome hair stylist (who is also a quilter) offered to quilt the king sized creation on her long arm quilting machine.
This beautiful friend of mine, Anne, has been an inspiration and a motivator for someone like me who has delusions of grandeur about many of my creative endeavors. Together, she and I joined the local quilt guild and I even went so far as to volunteer to be the secretary for this amazing group of creative folks. A few months into my new assignment I began to doubt the whole enterprise. The people who make up this group are, for the most part, gracious and humble. Each month, our business meeting is followed by “Show and Tell” where folks share their latest projects, both large and small. I’ve never once participated in “Show and Tell” for the obvious reason that I don’t seem to get any real quilting done.
Each month, I feel like a voyeur, or an imposter, at the very least a quilter wannabe who is too lazy, distracted, depressed or unfocused to actually complete anything for “Show and Tell.” My friend, Anne, will be my collaborator in my redemption and establishing among these oh-so-accomplished peers that I do indeed have the quilting “cred” (when we measured the completed top it was100 inches squared, just like the pattern I followed said it should be!)
But this isn’t just about quilting.
It’s actually about writing.
In a few days, I will be traveling to Homer, Alaska for the annual Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. I have attended this auspicious gathering of national and local writers for several years now. Each time I leave the conference I dream of returning with a completed manuscript. The next year I return feeling less like a writer and more like a voyeur, an imposter, a wannabe. I keep coming back though. I wonder why.
Last year when I attended my son’s graduation from Johns Hopkins University (he received a Master’s degree) he told me that when he is asked about his parents he says, “My father is an auctioneer and my mother is a writer.” Wow! Even I rarely call myself a writer, though I have been published and paid for my writing, so I guess I am qualified to do so. Writers write, quilters quilt, moms mother...and I have done more than these labels imply. Perhaps that is the problem, or at least MY problem. I have had a lot of experiences in life--I’ve been a “salad girl”, a waitress, a clerk, cashier, a childbirth educator, a pastoral associate and a writer--well, these are the roles for which I have been paid (not much, but hey, money is money.)
Of all the labels I have been given by people over the years, the one that perhaps delighted me and touched my soul was one given by the pastor of my church, several years ago when he was new to our parish and we barely knew each other. I had just changed the seasonal decor at my church (another “thing” I do) and while I was checking to see how it looked and he came up to me and said, “You are an artist.”
I would have been the last person to think that draping fabric over the pony walls in the sanctuary of my church was art and yet with that observation on his part, I began to see how it was so. My view of myself began to change with that one simple statement and I started to view the ministry of “church decorator” differently. I also began to appreciate that it was okay to be a “jack of all trades and a master of none”--or at least a jack of several trades and pretty damn good at all of them.
No matter our life’s work, no matter how much “success” we achieve at the various endeavors we undertake in life, we are far more than what we do. No matter how many detours we take in life, how many distractions take us away from our creative selves, we can change course, we can start over. If we set aside our projects, our careers, our dreams and our goals, we can, if we value them, return again and again, and again. Life is not a competition, least of all with ourselves. It is an adventure. We can always pick up where we left off.
