I keep thinking about this girl.
My Little e, who wiggles, and squiggles, and flits like a
hummingbird, took to this project with a rare stillness
and intensity.
She worked, and worked, and worked.
It makes me wonder if I do her a disservice by not doing these family projects more often.
Lately, I have been trying to make my creativity less insular. Our Ladies Art sessions, the group collage parties, and now this ornament making fete, are all an attempt to make a solitary venture into a group experience.
The things I make, while the products might be for others, the process is for me. It is how I deal with stress. Want to see me wonky? Take away all my creative supplies. Plop me down in a barren environment without access to a fiber, or a pen, or paper, or a kitchen and watch my brain implode.
I have been asked on occasion, how I deal with the stress of being a police officer's wife. My response is this, the anxiety never really goes away. It comes in waves, and peaks at odd, unpredictable times, but most of the time it just hums in the background. What I find to be the hardest part is the endlessness of it. We've been doing this for more than a dozen years, so the days, the events, the stress, the injuries, they blend into an endless cycle. The stress is like the laundry or the dishes; it is a constant part of the way I choose to live my life. I don't have to enjoy it, but I do have to cope with it.
What I need in my life to keep me sane is something that marks the days. This day was different from yesterday because I made this, or I created that, or I made this progress. I need something I can hold in my hands that is proof of today's work.
This is what I have always done. I make things. And most of the time, I have made things by myself.
Now that the girls are older, I have begun to worry that I am too withdrawn into my projects. I enjoy making things as a group, it just takes a part of my brain that often lies dormant. When I feel the need to create something, my first impulse is not to make it a family affair. I need to change this.