Charles

I think it's time to write a little post about my son. I have a lot of children. It can be confusing, especially when even though it seems like they won't hold still long enough to count them, you can't seem to get higher than six, but you're sure I told you I have seven. Where's the missing one?

He's in Heaven. He's up at the cemetery. He's in our hearts. We've explained it numerous ways to our children over the years, depending on context. And fielded all kinds of hilarious questions stemming from the difficulty in understanding the concept of Where Does Charles Live? Is the cemetery where Charles lives? Do I have a special place at the cemetery? Oh, he lives in heaven? Can I go to Heaven and see him? What if I lived at Heaven too?

Charles is my fourth child. Almost exactly six years ago, when he was two and a half, and my fifth child was a three-month-old infant, we were walking to the store, Jane strapped to my chest and Charles in the wagon behind me. It was two in the afternoon on a Wednesday, and we were walking on the sidewalk in a school zone. A truck full of hooligans high on drugs made a bad turn at an intersection, drove up onto the sidewalk and struck the wagon. Charles was killed instantly, Jane and I were totally unscathed.

Wow. It's hard to know where to go from there. Even six years later, I have too many thoughts and feelings that I want to share to pick one out and go with it. Maybe at this point, I just want to tell you about him, and also to clarify something that I think people who know me might have been thinking for some time now:

Charles and Max, his grampa, who
we hope are back together now.

Bob has been around much, much longer than Charles. Of course, anxiety, guilt, sorrow, and the whole package are Meat and Potatoes to Bob, and he's grown strong on them, but Charles' death wasn't Bob's birth. If anything, it's provided me with more tools to defeat and shut out Bob than any other event in my life. Which is weird, and I'm not even sure I can explain that.

Since this is a craft and depression blog, I'll tell you something that makes me sad, something I don't think I've ever mentioned to anyone before (so what better place to air my secret than The Internets, where anyone can see and it will be here for all time): I never made anything for Charles. He was my first boy, but he was a surprise boy - that is, going by the ultrasound pictures, we named him Jane and had a bunch of pink stuff ready and waiting. So the pretty flowered baby blanket I crocheted for him stayed in the closet, the baptism bonnet with lace somehow didn't get finished, and when Easter Dress Time rolled around, he got a new shirt from Target. He didn't even like dressing up, and he was only old enough to go Trick-or-Treating one Halloween.

Four children turned out to take up a lot of my time. That was when my making-things-thing started to tail off a bit. For example, I used to make Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs) for my children and Godchildren during Lent every year, with their initials and the year on each one. I think I started one for Charles when he was two,

determined that he should have at least one, but I didn't finish it; over a year after I started it, the egg carton tipped over in the closet and the egg popped, and everything in the carton had to be discarded, very very quickly. So, when I take up that hobby again, the first egg I make will be in his memory.

This is a photo of me that appeared in
the local newspaper coverage of
Charles' funeral - hundreds of
people were there.

Now I feel like I should end this post with something positive and lovely, but I'm kind of coming up blank. I have a new reflection from this year's Easter Season, though. During Jesus' Last Supper prayer, he says "No greater love has any man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends." I was sad, at times, that I didn't have even one second in which to try and save my son, even at the expense of my own life. People would say "wow, it's so lucky that you and Jane survived!" and I took it as graciously as I could, even though everything in me wanted to retort "Oh yeah? Lucky for whom?" I've never in my life been suicidal, but there have been long, long stretches of time where I wished I was dead.

And finally this year it clicked into place for me. One doesn't have to die in order to lay down one's life. Lucky for whom? For my children who were still with me. For Paul and Silas, who weren't born yet. For my husband, who may not have been able to take the loss of two children and a wife, but who bore up under the heavy loss of a son, with the help of his wife.

And for my friends. For all the people I love, I don't just die. I lay down my life by living it.

Commenting Rules

Before I've even put up any real posts, there are a couple of things I want to head off. I'm going to be sharing a lot of photos of my work, and a couple of typical reactions to things I make drive me up the wall. If they continually show up in the comments (which I will moderate anyway), then I'm going to hate doing this, which will totally defeat the purpose of having this blog. Therefore, I have two rules:

1. Don't ever tell me "I wish I could do that." If you really wished it, you'd learn. If I can learn it, you can - I'm not that special. I had no guru, no method, no teacher, just you and me... oh wait. No, really. My teachers are books and youtube. This stuff is not hard.

2. Don't ask me where I find the time. The answer to that is on BobTalkLand - I prioritize practical creativity over other things that you think are important. That's the only answer, and if I start thinking about it, I'm going to realize that your priorities must be better than mine and I should do other stuff before I sit down to work.

After that, I welcome your thoughts. Tell me about your own projects. Share your sources of inspiration. Tell me how wonderful I am. Go ahead!

Intro Post - Longer than Usual, I Promise.

Hi, welcome to my blog! I’m Kathleen, and I like real things. I like my toys made out of wood and fabric, my food made out of butter, wine, organic produce and fresh herbs, and my clothing custom made from natural fibers. Because of this, I tend to just make things myself. I find great satisfaction and peace in making things with my own two hands, using only the finest real components. However, I’m also a realist, and to be honest, there’s a lot of plastic in my life, both literal and figurative. I’m not totally hardcore – I make my own deodorant and toothpaste, but I use shampoo and shaving cream. And that’s OK.

Now that you know a bit about me, I’d like to introduce you to my friend Bob. Bob sits on my couch and sleeps in my bed and rides in the passenger seat of my car. He is very clever, and he gives me a lot of advice, since he knows so many things. For example, he knows that if I spent less money on fabric and crafting supplies that I’m probably not going to get around to using, maybe we could afford a bigger house. However, a bigger house would be a bad idea because I’m such a lousy housekeeper. And since I’m such a lousy housekeeper, I shouldn’t be wasting my time on sewing, quilting, knitting and all those other things, I should be doing a better job of what’s important, like exercising and eating right so I can be a valuable attractive person whose body shows no signs of age or the bearing of seven children. But he also knows that that will never happen, because I am a fat and worthless slob who isn’t very good at making things anyway, and I may as well give in, and eat chocolate in my messy house and play video games instead of doing anything “productive” (productive of what, anyway? Silly homemade stuff that no one wants?).

See, Bob is my depression. His voice is very different from my voice, but sometimes he talks so loud I get confused. So I gave him a name to help me distinguish him from me. Now I’m working on ending our relationship. I knew it had gone too far when I didn’t want to make things any more. Every time I thought of making something, I was filled with… nothing. Apathy. Sluggishness. Anything but inspiration (and I’m a total slave to my muse – more on that later). So, to be quite blunt, I shoved myself into therapy and started taking drugs. And now, I’m going to help myself save myself by turning back to my beautiful things.

I named this blog after the ancient Silk Road trading route, a long, arduous and dangerous journey that people took to obtain and trade beautiful things. (Well, and money too, but I’m not focusing on that.) I like the idea that beautiful things are worth pursuing. I also believe in the saving power of work. Making things for my family is better than buying things for my family because making things is a labor of love. (OK, Shopping is labor too, but I grumble the whole time, so there goes the redemptive power.) So, here is a place for me to share my work, delight in beauty, talk about depression, and maybe inspire and get inspired along the way.

This is probably the most personal I’ll ever get. I hope you enjoy my work.