Tonight, my grandma came to visit my daughter and I from Heaven. And I have to get it all out paper before the experience leaves me.
Do you ever have memories that just stick with you forever, and ever? Not traumatic or exciting memories, nothing particular happens, but for some reason you will always just remember just being there, the sights, the smells, the sounds?
When I was a small child, I don’t remember quite how old, but I am guessing around 7-8 ish, I was on a trip with my mother to visit my grandma and grandpa in North Carolina. My grandparents had let my Mom and I have their master bedroom during our stay and so my Mom and I shared the bed. What I specifically remember vividly to this day is waking up the next morning. It was a summer morning, before dawn, and my mom was still sleeping. The bed was positioned in a way where the headboard was up against a wall where there were two windows just up above us. I laid there, looking around. The morning light was just barely starting to poke through the room, giving that glowy peaceful look that kind of bounced off the colors already in the room (carpet, walls) to make this sort of light green sense throughout the room. A breeze entered above us, just gracefully embracing our cheeks, just enough to enjoy curling up under those morning warm covers. The air smelled of that early morning summer smell, like dew and grass cuttings. It was absolutely silent outside besides what seemed like hundred morning birds talking to each other through the trees behind their house. But what really seals the memory together, is I heard a train in the nearby distance. For some reason, on top of all the other beautiful senses in that moment, hearing the sound of the train horn and on off in that early morning was just absolutely peaceful to me. I fell back asleep curled up in the covers listening to the birds and the train, feeling the breeze on my cheeks, smelling the morning dew, and for some reason, that memory has stayed with me forever. It has always been a memory of peace and one I will always think about in relation to my grandma who has passed away.
My grandma had passed away in 2011, and since then I have had moments where I knew she was near and watching over me. But she has many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to watch over so I consider it a true blessing when she stops by to see us from Heaven.
Tonight, I went to put Abby to bed. I was nursing her in a rocking chair right next to an open window. We’ve been struggling trying to get Abbys nursery to an acceptable baby-safe temperature, so we have been trying to keep the windows open in the nursery when we know the weather will be stable overnight. So we sat there, with her in my arms, next to the open window. And the first thing I noticed, looking down at her nursing, is the green light. Our nursery curtains are a light green, teal almost. The dusk light after sunlight was fading fast but was just enough to shine through those curtains and create a green hazy glow around us. Looking at that green haze hit her beautiful blue eyes was something I want to remember the rest of my life. Then I noticed the breeze gracefully entering through the window, pushing the curtains slightly toward us occasionally hitting my arm. I also heard birds out the window chirping as they settled in for the night. It’s a beautiful summer night, mid-sixty degrees, and the air just smelled of a jar full of summer. And I thought, this seems a lot like that memory waking up at my grandmas. The light, the sounds, the smell, the feeling, the peace. The only addition was seeing my daughters wondrous bright blue eyes looking up at me as she nursed, and her fingers wrapping around my finger. And I speculated that maybe, just MAYBE this was my grandma coming in to say hello to let me know she was in the room and with Abby and I. But who ever really knows?
But then, I heard it. A train horn sounded at a nearby distance.
We have a train near our house but even though we have been here for 2 years, I have never noticed a specific pattern with when the train comes, although I’ve heard it before. It just seems to come randomly. But the sound of the train sounds to be the exact distance away as when I heard it many years ago on that early morning. That on and off sound of the train horn with the train hitting the tracks in between.
That was when I knew. My grandma was definitely here and saying hello to Abby and I, letting us know she was here and maybe might even stay the night. I said hello, I missed her, thank you for visiting and for giving me that experience, and I let Abby know her great grandma was here too.
Goodnight Abby, Goodnight Grandma in Heaven, Goodnight World.
Love, the new Motherboard. <3
Showing posts with label grandmother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grandmother. Show all posts
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Saturday, January 26, 2019
The Piece You Made With Me
Almost exactly a year ago to this day, I began a new hobby. Prior to that, when making a Christmas list for Christmas 2017, I thought, hey cross stitching looks fun, (and much to my wrong thinking, looks easy). So I picked out a completely random set on Amazon and put it on my list. My husband got me the kit for that Christmas. Right around this time exactly, last January, I was nauseous a lot in the early stages of the pregnancy and I was looking for something to keep my mind off it, especially at nights after work. So I got out the kit and started one night. I had no idea what I was doing and quickly learned this was not going to be easy. I read the directions, and I shook my head and thought to myself, no way. I can’t figure this out. I put the directions back in the kit and resumed watching tv, giving up without even starting. I watched tv for about 5 more minutes, while I stared at the kit next to me on the couch. I picked up the kit again and thought, what the hell? I can at least try. So I got the kit back out, the thread, directions, etc. I still didn’t really know what I was doing. There were color codes for the thread and little numbers next to it like (1), (2), (3), etc., all the way up to 6. What did these mean?? I, of course, ignored it. I figured out the color code and pattern and I began to try and put the thread in the needle. Well, THAT took about 30 minutes my first time, and a lot of frustration (ALMOST leading to the whole thing going back in the kit). I started following the pattern and got about 20 or so stitches done....when the needle literally broke in half. That was it. No more. I was done. This was stupid and stupid to ask for, stupid to try, and it was all stupid. I was giving up. I put it all away again and tossed it aside.
The next night, I looked at the kit again and thought, what did I do wrong? I took it back out and looked at the directions again and saw it...(you professional cross stitchers out there will laugh at this, but remember, I had never done this), but I saw it! Those NUMBERS (1), (2), etc, were telling me how many individual threads were supposed to be used to indicate the thickness of the thread color! Dope me the first time put all six strands in which was way too thick! No wonder it was hard to thread my first time and the needle broke. So now, determined to succeed, I flipped the piece over and started again all over at the other corner and was on my way.
Over the next few nights, I began doing anywhere between 30-60 minutes every single night on this piece. And I made A LOT of mistakes, and still almost thought about giving up many times. It was humbling to work so hard and for so long to feel like I was making so little progress in comparison to the whole picture. But it also occurred to me that the struggles I was facing in the piece, had a strange metaphor to what was going on in my life at the time. I had just recently been asked to cover someone else’s job while they were on maternity leave, a job not only I had never done before, knew very little about, did not have the correct resources/clearances to do said job, had no training to do job, no preparation, and we had just gone live with a software that this job was right in the middle of it all. Oh, and I was in my own first trimester with Abby and nauseous, VERY nauseous, every single day. Needless to say, life was kind of a stressful mess! But as I sat there at night working on my piece, I felt that even though it felt I was making little progress in comparison to the entire huge piece that seemed like it would never get done, I could get one stitch done at a time. If I could make one stitch, that was one more stitch that I had the day prior and I would slowly make progress. And it hit me, that’s all I could do at my job to stay sane. If I could at least show up and get a little done each day, without stressing myself out about the "entire piece" then I could manage that. If I could figure out how to correct my mistakes and set backs in my cross stitch, then I could figure out how to move past challenges and set backs in my job, too. The stitch also provided a way for me to spend time at night not thinking about work and just relaxing throughout the pregnancy.
I continued on, every night, and my job began to let up. The person came back from leave and I finished that "duty", but then got asked to cover someone else’s maternity leave that had a similar job. Luckily I at least knew more about that persons job role and had prior experience in it, so I was a lot less stressed. I began to feel that as Abby was growing bigger in the womb, she was connected to the cross stitch as they began to grow together. We sat for hours on weeknights and weekends together, feeling her kick and getting through the nausea, migraines, etc, together, as we worked on the piece. It felt so good to see progress as I was starting to make out actual shapes, i.e. I made a tree! A fence! A shed! It’s actually looks like something! Each stitch I had worked so hard for, it was beginning to look like something!
But of course there were set backs. Not only hundreds of mistakes (I am still SO confused as to how I could possibly so diligently follow the pattern and yet was constantly running into errors!) but then there was the BIG set back. I was about to go on a work trip. I was packing for the trip and wanted to bring my cross stitch as something to do when I was alone in the hotel room at night, probably nauseous. I put it INSIDE my suitcase on top of all my stuff, I closed the lid but I hadn’t zippered the suitcase yet as I intended to still put a few last minute things in. I had a late day flight and that morning decided to take a nap before having to go to the airport. Well, right as I went in to go collect my suitcase before final preparations to leave for the airport, there my piece was, on the floor, shredded!!! My DOG, my sweet angel but PSYCHO dog who thinks she is a GOAT with how attracted to paper she is, had completely torn up my pattern. I sat down in tears after yelling at the dog and picked up my piece, which I thought was a complete goner. LUCKILY she SOMEHOW must not have been able to eat the piece itself and was just interested in the paper pattern sheet, which was now officially in shreds! So I still had my piece. I ordered a whole new kit on Amazon so that I could get a new pattern sheet. I had to sit there and cross out all the stitches I had already done and probably lost a good 2 weeks on the process. But, like other challenges, we persevered.
Then a complete new development happened. I was regularly posting updates on my piece on facebook, and my aunt had noticed something very peculiar. She picked up that the piece actually was a picture of a place. It was the Mabry mill along the Blue Ridge parkway in Virginia. All this time I thought it was just a pretty picture. Then for my aunt to recognize it and it was a real place!? What became even more goosebumpy, was that turns out, according to my Aunt and seconded by other family members, turns out the Mabry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway was one of my grandmothers FAVORITE places to visit when traveling. This really struck on a heartstring for me, as my grandmother had passed away 7 years ago. So to have completely randomly picked a cross stitch piece on Amazon, persevere through all the challenges and continue on, and then to realize it was a picture of my grandmothers favorite place? It felt like more than a coincidence. As I continued stitching every night, it felt like not only was I doing it with Abby in the womb, but also with my grandmother watching over my shoulder, too.
Here is the Mabry Mill in real life:
As we counted down the days to our due date, I tried desperately to finish before she came. I had this fear that once a new mom when she was born, I would never have time to do stitching ever again. I feared I had come so far, so close to finishing, only to let it sit unfinished for the next 20 years til I could pick it up again. I didn’t want to let myself down, Abby down, my grandmother down.
But, It was unrealistic. I couldn’t finish before she came. So she came! And yes, the first month or so of Abby being here, I didn’t touch it. For multiple reasons. I was too tired. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to focus on it, I couldn’t focus on it. I didn’t want to get the whole thing out and start stitching only to have her cry and I would have to put the whole thing away again. I wouldn’t label it as post partum depression, but the first month or so post partum, the whole artistic side of me kind of felt shut down. Like mom-mode was so dominant during that time, the tiredness, it all took over and I couldn’t possibly think about doing anything related to art, or my stitch.
After a month or so, I still didn’t want to stitch. Like, I really didn’t want to. I resented it. I felt pressure now to do it, like getting a masters dissertation done after years of procrastination. Now it just felt like something I felt pressured to do, because it had meant so much to me before the birth. But deep inside me, way deep deep down, I knew the answer to it all was to try. I had to try to finish.
So, very similar to how I started back in January 2018, one stitch at a time, I resumed again just so, one stitch at a time. And it did something miraculous. One stitch at a time, each stitch started rebuilding that part of my brain, the artistic side, the me side. It started pulling me out of the post partum funk, reminding me of who I am and what I like to do, and that it was OKAY to work on fun things even with a baby. So on maternity leave, while she napped, I got about an hour or so each day to continue working on it. In December 2018 I FINALLY got it done!
And you know what? There are SOOOOO many mistakes. Like, so, so, so many. Probably over a hundred. And of course one mistake leads to others, naturally, as the pattern has to rework itself. It’s a miracle it turned out even looking like something at all. But, you know what else? To me, its another metaphor about it all. It felt like a metaphor for MY OWN SELF. The mistakes is what made it perfect, to me. It made it unique, technically it was like no other piece, even if they had the same pattern. It was it's own snow flake. And the fact that there were so many mistakes but still came out to be beautiful, gave me hope that in my life there are so many mistakes that have happened over the years but that is what makes me who I am today. And its all still so beautiful. Deep.
So I look at the finished piece today, framed and in my living room as a daily reminder that:
1. Life is all about getting one stitch done at a time.
2. Mistakes are what make life beautiful.
3. Each challenge might seem insurmountable but is indeed eventually possible to overcome in some way.
4. My grandmother is still always watching over me.
5. Art, any kind of art, can help pull a new mom back to herself. Art can do wonderful things for the brain!
I hope to get to visit the Mabry mill in person one day! Life is short. Life is fascinating. It is a small, weird strange world. And I love it.
This piece is for my grandmother. This piece is for Abby. This piece is for me.
Thank you for reading.
Here is the final piece:
The next night, I looked at the kit again and thought, what did I do wrong? I took it back out and looked at the directions again and saw it...(you professional cross stitchers out there will laugh at this, but remember, I had never done this), but I saw it! Those NUMBERS (1), (2), etc, were telling me how many individual threads were supposed to be used to indicate the thickness of the thread color! Dope me the first time put all six strands in which was way too thick! No wonder it was hard to thread my first time and the needle broke. So now, determined to succeed, I flipped the piece over and started again all over at the other corner and was on my way.
Over the next few nights, I began doing anywhere between 30-60 minutes every single night on this piece. And I made A LOT of mistakes, and still almost thought about giving up many times. It was humbling to work so hard and for so long to feel like I was making so little progress in comparison to the whole picture. But it also occurred to me that the struggles I was facing in the piece, had a strange metaphor to what was going on in my life at the time. I had just recently been asked to cover someone else’s job while they were on maternity leave, a job not only I had never done before, knew very little about, did not have the correct resources/clearances to do said job, had no training to do job, no preparation, and we had just gone live with a software that this job was right in the middle of it all. Oh, and I was in my own first trimester with Abby and nauseous, VERY nauseous, every single day. Needless to say, life was kind of a stressful mess! But as I sat there at night working on my piece, I felt that even though it felt I was making little progress in comparison to the entire huge piece that seemed like it would never get done, I could get one stitch done at a time. If I could make one stitch, that was one more stitch that I had the day prior and I would slowly make progress. And it hit me, that’s all I could do at my job to stay sane. If I could at least show up and get a little done each day, without stressing myself out about the "entire piece" then I could manage that. If I could figure out how to correct my mistakes and set backs in my cross stitch, then I could figure out how to move past challenges and set backs in my job, too. The stitch also provided a way for me to spend time at night not thinking about work and just relaxing throughout the pregnancy.
I continued on, every night, and my job began to let up. The person came back from leave and I finished that "duty", but then got asked to cover someone else’s maternity leave that had a similar job. Luckily I at least knew more about that persons job role and had prior experience in it, so I was a lot less stressed. I began to feel that as Abby was growing bigger in the womb, she was connected to the cross stitch as they began to grow together. We sat for hours on weeknights and weekends together, feeling her kick and getting through the nausea, migraines, etc, together, as we worked on the piece. It felt so good to see progress as I was starting to make out actual shapes, i.e. I made a tree! A fence! A shed! It’s actually looks like something! Each stitch I had worked so hard for, it was beginning to look like something!
But of course there were set backs. Not only hundreds of mistakes (I am still SO confused as to how I could possibly so diligently follow the pattern and yet was constantly running into errors!) but then there was the BIG set back. I was about to go on a work trip. I was packing for the trip and wanted to bring my cross stitch as something to do when I was alone in the hotel room at night, probably nauseous. I put it INSIDE my suitcase on top of all my stuff, I closed the lid but I hadn’t zippered the suitcase yet as I intended to still put a few last minute things in. I had a late day flight and that morning decided to take a nap before having to go to the airport. Well, right as I went in to go collect my suitcase before final preparations to leave for the airport, there my piece was, on the floor, shredded!!! My DOG, my sweet angel but PSYCHO dog who thinks she is a GOAT with how attracted to paper she is, had completely torn up my pattern. I sat down in tears after yelling at the dog and picked up my piece, which I thought was a complete goner. LUCKILY she SOMEHOW must not have been able to eat the piece itself and was just interested in the paper pattern sheet, which was now officially in shreds! So I still had my piece. I ordered a whole new kit on Amazon so that I could get a new pattern sheet. I had to sit there and cross out all the stitches I had already done and probably lost a good 2 weeks on the process. But, like other challenges, we persevered.
Then a complete new development happened. I was regularly posting updates on my piece on facebook, and my aunt had noticed something very peculiar. She picked up that the piece actually was a picture of a place. It was the Mabry mill along the Blue Ridge parkway in Virginia. All this time I thought it was just a pretty picture. Then for my aunt to recognize it and it was a real place!? What became even more goosebumpy, was that turns out, according to my Aunt and seconded by other family members, turns out the Mabry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway was one of my grandmothers FAVORITE places to visit when traveling. This really struck on a heartstring for me, as my grandmother had passed away 7 years ago. So to have completely randomly picked a cross stitch piece on Amazon, persevere through all the challenges and continue on, and then to realize it was a picture of my grandmothers favorite place? It felt like more than a coincidence. As I continued stitching every night, it felt like not only was I doing it with Abby in the womb, but also with my grandmother watching over my shoulder, too.
Here is the Mabry Mill in real life:
As we counted down the days to our due date, I tried desperately to finish before she came. I had this fear that once a new mom when she was born, I would never have time to do stitching ever again. I feared I had come so far, so close to finishing, only to let it sit unfinished for the next 20 years til I could pick it up again. I didn’t want to let myself down, Abby down, my grandmother down.
But, It was unrealistic. I couldn’t finish before she came. So she came! And yes, the first month or so of Abby being here, I didn’t touch it. For multiple reasons. I was too tired. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to focus on it, I couldn’t focus on it. I didn’t want to get the whole thing out and start stitching only to have her cry and I would have to put the whole thing away again. I wouldn’t label it as post partum depression, but the first month or so post partum, the whole artistic side of me kind of felt shut down. Like mom-mode was so dominant during that time, the tiredness, it all took over and I couldn’t possibly think about doing anything related to art, or my stitch.
After a month or so, I still didn’t want to stitch. Like, I really didn’t want to. I resented it. I felt pressure now to do it, like getting a masters dissertation done after years of procrastination. Now it just felt like something I felt pressured to do, because it had meant so much to me before the birth. But deep inside me, way deep deep down, I knew the answer to it all was to try. I had to try to finish.
So, very similar to how I started back in January 2018, one stitch at a time, I resumed again just so, one stitch at a time. And it did something miraculous. One stitch at a time, each stitch started rebuilding that part of my brain, the artistic side, the me side. It started pulling me out of the post partum funk, reminding me of who I am and what I like to do, and that it was OKAY to work on fun things even with a baby. So on maternity leave, while she napped, I got about an hour or so each day to continue working on it. In December 2018 I FINALLY got it done!
And you know what? There are SOOOOO many mistakes. Like, so, so, so many. Probably over a hundred. And of course one mistake leads to others, naturally, as the pattern has to rework itself. It’s a miracle it turned out even looking like something at all. But, you know what else? To me, its another metaphor about it all. It felt like a metaphor for MY OWN SELF. The mistakes is what made it perfect, to me. It made it unique, technically it was like no other piece, even if they had the same pattern. It was it's own snow flake. And the fact that there were so many mistakes but still came out to be beautiful, gave me hope that in my life there are so many mistakes that have happened over the years but that is what makes me who I am today. And its all still so beautiful. Deep.
So I look at the finished piece today, framed and in my living room as a daily reminder that:
1. Life is all about getting one stitch done at a time.
2. Mistakes are what make life beautiful.
3. Each challenge might seem insurmountable but is indeed eventually possible to overcome in some way.
4. My grandmother is still always watching over me.
5. Art, any kind of art, can help pull a new mom back to herself. Art can do wonderful things for the brain!
I hope to get to visit the Mabry mill in person one day! Life is short. Life is fascinating. It is a small, weird strange world. And I love it.
This piece is for my grandmother. This piece is for Abby. This piece is for me.
Thank you for reading.
Here is the final piece:
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