I was thinking about how much I used to LOVE to make things. Every year I would learn a new craft, and then gift it to my family for Christmas. I am not sure they always appreciated my endeavors, but things pop up here and there, that they still own or display, so maybe it wasn't all a lost cause. Here are a few of the more memorable crafts:
Years, nay aeons ago, when I was a new bride, I learned to clean ceramics from greenware, then paint and carefully drybrush the pieces after they were fired. I loved to make things look as realistic as possible and still fondly remember the Santas I made for everyone that year. Somehow, I did not end up with one for myself!
I learned to do stained glass and spent hours cutting small glass pieces and carefully wrapping them in glowing copper tape. There is no telling how many thousands of little cuts I got on my fingers and arms...but I did not care. I was happily engrossed in creating beauty out of glass and color.
I was a "scrapper" too...spending every waking moment (and I do mean every) that I was not at work, carefully telling the story of our lives with paper and photographs. My husband was in grad school, so during those late nights while he was studying, I was cutting and taping and arranging...happily passing the hours and reliving the fun times we had with each other and our families.
Then there were the jewelry years...haunting the bead shop on Broadway and the Dragon's Lair, the bead show that came to town twice a year. With my trusty calculator nearby (aka the Hillbilly), I would shop the bead show for hours, agonizing over color and cut, stone shape and size, trying my best to get the most for my money. But my favorite part of this phase was making a necklace, earrings and bracelet to wear to work...an hour before I had to be there! Boy, life without kids was so very different (but that is another story all together!). I had shows to sell my items, and sometimes even sold it off my neck and arms! What a hoot!
And so we come to my Great Revelation. I was trying to figure out why I had stopped learning new things. Why I had stopped creating. You see, I am a creative person. Created by God to make things. It is in every atom of my body, and if I am not creating then I am not very happy. Then I realized, as I stood in my kitchen with my kefir water happily bubbling away in one corner, and my bone broth in another, with my home made sausage in the freezer and my kids scones in the oven, that I AM creating, just in a whole new arena.
Food is now the medium I work in, the thing that keeps me up late doing research or stirring a pot, or carefully shopping at the store looking for just the right ingredient. Food is wrapped around all the stories of our lives and is the center of so many of our interactions. Shapes and colors, savory and sweet, glittering glass jars and shimmering steel pots. Food! What a joyful, wonderful revelation!
Food.
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