Sometimes I wonder if my daughter wishes she’d been born to a different mom—the kind of mom who initiates crafts with her kids, maybe researches them on-line, subscribes to craft magazines, and actually buys craft supplies. Although I’ve been known to take Leah to Michael’s, I’m the kind of person who would rather send her kids outside to find available sticks and rocks. Or accompany them to the park to play baseball. Or read. To my kids or to myself—I’m happy either way.
Leah is a good reader, but the fact that she would rather do something else continues to astonish me. Actually, what astonishes me is that she’s become quite a capable crafter—I would go so far as to say “fiber artist”— in spite of her mother (I sometimes think of her as my mini Martha Stewart). Testament to the reality that your child will develop talents and passions not your own. Also that you don’t even have to offer up the experience because if they care enough, they will find a way. (And isn’t that a load off?)
Leah recently took up knitting, courtesy of a same-aged friend who taught her, and completed in a week or so a washcloth for her grandma’s birthday. No dropped stitches, not a one. I do not knit, but you knew that already. I had never even handled knitting needles until I put them in the shopping cart for Leah. That was when I learned they came in different sizes. She had to have knitting needles, because knitting, it seems, is hip with ten-year-olds—and how can I argue with buying them for her because really, it’s so cool she can knit. The fifth-grade crew at her school are into it—not all of them, but on any given day I hear stories about who’s working on what project. They gather together at school at various appropriate times and places, lunch time and such, to knit and chat, and they’ve even started a yarn exchange. Me, I would have been out playing baseball with the boys.
But this is how I know my daughter is a crafter at heart. She spent an entire afternoon painting designs on jars with puffy paint, every jar in the house, I believe. She hummed the entire time, and I knew from her humming she was in a zone. A more typical day includes barking at her brother, bugging her parents to take her to some place on her personal agenda (CreativiTea in Fairhaven is high on her list), or calling friends to play. She’s an on-the-move kind of kid, not someone I would call quiet or reflective, but when she’s crafting, she’s calm, centered, at peace with the world. It’s a Zen thing for her, and I love seeing her in this place.
I’m also glad I don’t have to do it with her, and she doesn’t seem to mind.