Creative Differences

Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Today I am grateful for creative differences. I think I’m on the mend today because the crawly feeling in my ears and throat is gone so I don’t think I’m going to wind up as a bad Hitchcock movie.

With a moderate amount of energy, I don’t feel like napping, poking on Facebook, napping, etc. all day today. I’d like to accomplish something. I’ve had the paint for my front door for a year and thought today might be the day to do it. Then the thought of prepping put that out of my head, so I decided to do some embroidery.

Probably half of those reading this will not even know what embroidery is. Look it up. I have several projects I want to do, but thought I might be running low on embroidery floss. Then I remembered that my mom had given me hers five years ago when she moved from Arizona to Wisconsin.

My mother was an excellent seamstress and embroidered with the same precise skill. Each color used exactly where the pattern designers said they should be. No variation in design. No funky, weird colors used just because. “That’s not the way it says to do it,” my mom would argue with me when I wanted to break out and do something differently.

I clearly remember her giving me her embroidery bin and saying, “I have a couple of things started but I just can’t see well enough to do it anymore. You might as well take them and finish them.” One by one everything she enjoyed doing was lost due to failing eyesight from macular degeneration.

Before even having my morning tea I was poking around looking for the bin. I knew I had stuck it someplace enclosed because I remember the stench. I had to sit the entire box in the sun for days, trying to get rid of the stale cigarette smell from my mom’s mobile home. Yuk! I wondered if I’d ever be able to tolerate embroidering with it. You can’t launder floss. There it was, right in the cedar chest.

Gingerly I popped the lid off the storage box, waiting for the waft of Mexican cigarettes. Nope. No stench. I guess five years in a cedar chest was enough time.

Digging through the contents I found a smaller bin with my mom’s embroidery floss, neatly wrapped around little pieces of cardboard and lined up according to color.

I laughed! Hard. . .and long! My old white grocery bag is stuffed with a balled mess of twisted and tangled embroidery floss, much like my brain. . .and my creative endeavors. I never know which whim I’ll be following. Manufacturer’s instructions are merely suggestions, so organization doesn’t matter. Besides. . . I like digging into the colorful ball to find a surprise. My method would make her crazy. Hers makes me laugh.

This morning, laying our embroidery containers side-by-side I saw a clear definition of my mom’s and my creative differences. Neither is bad. Just different. That’s okay. And mom. . .Yes, I’ll finish the Christmas sampler for you. Red and Green, right? We’ll see. . .

i-thiW#