Velvet Verbosity

Everyone has a mum, and I’d like you to meet mine.  I have an ulterior motive internet, but it is a noble one, I assure you.  (Hang in with me on this one, there’s bound to be tears.) You see, for years I’ve watched my mom struggle and sacrifice.  I’ve also watched my mother pour love into handmade things, and then break her back selling them at small town craft fairs for a quarter of what they are worth in material, time, talent, and quality. So I’ve decided to build my mother an Etsy site for her crafts.

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Scroll down to the last paragraph to see how you can help me spread the word to help get her shop off the ground.

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In fact, I’ve watched my mother work hard all her life, make sacrifices for others, and all for little reward, though she manages to be a happy little bugger despite the struggle.

I’m setting out to put an end to that struggle, today.  I want my mother to be able to R E T I R E!  I want her to create things she loves, and have them valued and treasured by other families who appreciate the craft.  I want to know that someone who has been nothing but hard-working, decent, and kind her whole life gets rewarded in the end.   I want her to grow old with a decent life.  Not one of indulgence, but for heaven’s sake, at least one of decent comfort, like heat set to no less than 65 degrees, and being able to buy a little something for herself now and then. Criminy!

Readers, I’m not asking you to buy anything out of charity.  If this were that, I’d just set up a donation box.  No.  I want to introduce you to my mother, to all that she has gifted me, and to her talent.   My hope is that you’ll feel inspired to pass this story along.  This is a story of a woman who is talented, but not technically savvy, and without the means to hire someone who is.  This is a story of a woman who lives in an area where monies are spent on four-wheel monstrosities that kick up mud, farm equipment, and big hair-dos, NOT beautiful crafts.  This is a story of a woman who doesn’t have it in her to be snobby or dishonest, and therefore undersells her talent and her time.  This is a story of a woman who has been creating things all her life, from hand-knit sweaters to hand-built pieces of furniture, and everything you can imagine in-between.  This is also the story of a woman who has sacrificed for others, gone without, and struggled through many hardships.  This is a story of a woman who deserves more than life has given her so far.  This is a story of circumstance.

One day, several years ago, I went to visit my mother, and she came into the living room with a large piece of cardboard.  She said, “I’ve decided to try my hand at painting, but I didn’t want to spend the money on a canvas until I knew if I had any talent.”  She turned the cardboard around and revealed an exquisite scene of a pond and gazebo with delicate swans floating on the serene surface.  This was her very first painting, and it was lovely.  It was on a piece of cardboard!

Internet, please!  Why is my mother painting on a piece of cardboard?

That’s where I come in, the daughter who didn’t say thank-you quite nearly enough.  I have enough technical savvy, and extended networks, to maybe give something back.  This is my chance.  So Mom?

• Thank you for always believing in me, even when I couldn’t.  Now it’s my turn to believe in you.
• Thank you for breaking your back, on your feet hours every day to keep us going.
• Thank you for making our crap-tastic apartments look beautiful with your loving hand; sanding floors, papering walls, painting, and building things even if all of it would be only temporary before we moved again.
• Thank you for always making me look beautiful at my most important events. Especially that pink hand-crocheted floor length gown for my third-grade spring concert that made all the girls turn green with envy.
• Thank you for biting your tongue all through the fashion-wreck of the 80’s.
• Thank you for holding my hand while I brought my own first born into the world.
• Thank you for teaching me a woman’s place is where she wants it to be.
• Thank you for teaching me what kindness is.
• Thank you for always leading by example.
• Thank you for Joni Mitchell (that’s a WHOLE other mom story), and Ayn Rand.  I needed them both for different reasons.
• Thank you for encouraging my mind and my talent more than my packaging.
• Thank you for the hand-made complete redesign of my room every few years to satisfy my favorite color fickleness.
• Thank you for teaching me how to use my reason, while keeping the connection to my heart.
• Thank you for letting me live my own life, but still being there when I falter, without ever saying, “I told you so”.  This is worth gold.
• Thank you for my wedding dress, my bridesmaids’ dresses, the flowers, and my god, all the planning and patience you put into a wedding you didn’t have your heart behind, but you did it all because you loved me, all the while weeping as you worked, unbeknownst to me.
• Thank you for letting me live through the teen years.  God knows anyone else might have knocked me out for being such a selfish sass.
• Thank you for always emphasizing how important family is.
• Thank you for celebrating me every chance you got.
• Thank you for loving my Dad, cause he’s pretty awesome-sauce too.
• Thank you for loving my sisters, my children, and theirs, because we are all better for it.
• Thank you for lending me your favorite shawl, knowing you wouldn’t see it again for months, because that’s the kind of sacrifices you always make for the happiness of your children, and it’s kind of ridiculous, and we’re kind of ungrateful wretches when you think about it.
• Thank you for knowing me better than anyone else, and knowing when I need you.
• Thank you for being there, every damn time I’ve needed you.
• Thank you Mom, for all of it.

I love you.   There will never be enough words to tell you how much.  This is for you.

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Ok, you with the wet eyes, back to logistics for a moment.

My mother crafts primarily with recycled, vintage materials, in Shabby Chic, Cottage, and Victorian styles.  Right now, many of her crafts have been sold, or are out at craft fairs (where they will sell for far too little), so when I proposed this idea to her, all she had on hand where some handmade lavender sachets.  There are only two up at the moment, but I will be adding more over the next few days.  Not that these aren’t adorable and delightful for those who love girly, romantic, nostalgic frou-frou stuff!  Just that there will be more.  I hope for there to be lots more over time.  Handmade ornaments, stockings, and wreaths for next Christmas.  Delightfully sweet little romantic kibblets for Valentine’s Day.  (Don’t ask me what a kibblet is, I just made it up while thinking about tiny kitten faces, and tiny vintage buttons, and cherubs with pink cheeks.  You’re welcome.)  Hand-bags, and various other what-nots, along with special orders.

How you can help:  In the meantime, I’m hoping that all of you will visit her shop, leave her a note of encouragement, share this story or her shop through your Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Blog account.  The gift I want to give my mother is the gift of getting her stuff out there, helping it to gain a following and attention, so that she can focus on doing what she does best: creating and making art.

If this happens, my blog will have served a wonderful purpose.

P.S. I’m excited to announce that the shop will have one-of-a-kind Christmas stockings up next week!  Just in time.  Whew.

P.P.S. I’m ALSO excited to announce that this post is now part of the Loads of Hope Blog Carnival, and if you haven’t yet experienced Blog Nosh, you really really should.

With love,

The news that our school was to have a band was announced during a 5th-6th grade assembly.  Assemblies were exciting news in and of themselves.  Who knew what could happen at an assembly?  Maybe the hoped for petting zoo and circus wouldn’t materialize after all, but no matter, because we welcomed any opportunity to break up the monotony of class.

The principal of the school strode out to the middle of the school gym, center stage, and announced that our school had been awarded funds for music education.  We were going to have a BAND, for 5th and 6th graders only!  The instruments were paraded around and demonstrated, and after, we all jostled each other around to get to the sign up sheet like we were signing up to see Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.  We were that excited.  We were absolutely rabid to have a chance to play an instrument.

On the bus ride home that afternoon, all the kids were chattering about what instrument they wanted to play.  None louder than Snotty Dotty.

Snotty Dotty was my neighbor.  She was a “late” child.  All of her sisters were much older.  Teenagers approaching full on womanhood, and they were like aliens to me, frightening and wild and dangerous seeming.  They had boyfriends, and rode around in cars, and got to boss us around if they felt like it.  They knew things that they didn’t tell us, but they always had that look on their face when they watched us.

I didn’t like Dotty, but I was forced to go to her house after school every day until my parents got home.  She was a Momma’s girl, and all she ever wanted to do was play House with plastic baby dolls, and try and boss me around because her mom looked after me, and because her older sisters were always ready to threaten anyone that didn’t do exactly as their baby sister liked.  I didn’t get much opportunity to say no to Dotty.

On the bus, she was twisted around in her seat asking all the kids what instrument they were going to play.  The girls were all going for the clarinet and the flute, and the boys were all about the drums and the tubas.  I shoved my face up against the window, thinking about the flute.  Imagining the delicate shiny silver cylinder with its series of openings and keys, and the complex array of finger positions I would have to learn to make it sing.

I felt Dotty turn in her seat toward me, then she poked me in the shoulder.

“What are you gonna play?”

I looked at her pasty face eyeballing me, as the chatter went on behind her.

“The trombone”, I said, defiantly.

“What?  You can’t play the trombone.  That’s for boys stupid.”

“Well, that’s what I’m playing.  You’ll see.”

Dotty turned back to the bobbing rows of children, and scornfully announced what I had just said.  I heard the laughter erupt, and I shoved my cheek back up against the cool window.

You’ll see, I thought.

With love,

This was first posted on my original blog, www.velvetverbosity.blogspot.com, before blogger went temporarily insane and locked me out of my account, forcing me to start here anew. I am in process of moving what I want to save from there to here. Eventually, I’ll get my own domain, but for now I want to merge the two blogs, and give readers of VelvetVerbosity2 the opportunity to read some of what was written “then”.

It is 1976 and my white hair falls well below my shoulders, skimming the floor and picking up dust when I lean under the bed to pull out the photo album. I run the pads of my fingertips over the front of the album, across the face of the foal pictured there. At 6, I’m a natural at wistful longing.

Inside are three pages of photos spanning a decade or so. In one, he leans coolly against a car, not smiling, but soberly penetrating the lens of the camera. This picture I took from a box of photos belonging to my mother and I imagined it was taken during my mother and father’s “dating”, pre-baby years. In another, he is younger still, dressed in a military uniform. I retrieved this one from the same box and I know this was taken before my mother. She knew him after he was in the navy. That much I knew…that much and little else.

I stare for long moments, look into his eyes and try to figure out who he was, where he could be now, and why he didn’t love me enough to stick around and see me through childhood. I hated and longed for him simultaneously, petrified at the thought of how dangerous it was to be too angry. What if there was a good reason? What if something had happened to him? No, it wasn’t ok to hate him. At 6, I knew that too.

I fantasized about him knocking on my door and scooping me up with a big smile, clamping me with strong arms and assuring me he never ever would have stayed away so long if he hadn’t been lost at sea, his pockets full of the letters he couldn’t send. I strain over the photos in the album, some fading, trying to piece together who this man was, my father, trying to remember his voice, his smell, his laugh. I remember nothing of those things, though I paint my own picture of him in my mind, glued together from the photos on the page.

image: http://www.garderisettes.fr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=57

Outside, a slate November sky hangs low, its belly resting on the rooftops of our neighbors’ houses. From this, I know to wear my blue parka, the one with the deep pockets and fake fur lining the hood.

I grab my red wagon and drag it, clattering, down the front steps. I don’t like the noise it makes as I pull it behind me down the sidewalk. I like silence, but the noisy wagon is essential to my walks.

Secretly, I am pleased that the street is empty. No people, no cars. Everyone is at church except us…my parents are atheists. My parents are asleep in their big brass bed that is as high as the tip of my nose. I am also thankful for that. Alone is how I like to be in the world.

A few feet in front of me I see her, laying stiff on the cement. I close the gap and squat down to look more closely. A mother squirrel, of this I am sure. No blood…how did she die here? There is something coming out of her that looks like yellow eggs. I think these must be her babies.

Tears spill, not for her death, but because she will never know her babies and they will never know her. Because I knew the place where she fell meant that something had taken her life, something human…man-made. Because she should not be left to rot on this street made of oily asphalt.

Carefully, I pick up her rigid body and place her gently into the wagon. I walk more slowly now, trying to avoid the bumps in the sidewalk. I look back to make sure she is not jostling too much, and I cringe when I see her furred body slide from side to side.

I bury the mother and her babies in the brown dirt beneath the bowed branches of our weeping willow. This is where my own mother plants bulbs every year. I won’t tell her…she would be mad.

In Shannock the best sledding hill is my backyard. On snow days all the kids from the neighborhood gather there, dragging their bladed sleds and blue saucers. The “hill” is an enormous bowl in the ground…a crater. So we have contests to see who can make a run down the hill and make it the furthest up the other side. Cheating is not tolerated and warrants snow bombs upon the perpetrator.

We are tireless, pushing the trails further and further up the other side of the hill. We sweat inside our snowsuits and our noses turn red and run. We soak our mittens and ignore frozen toes until it becomes unbearable. Then we go inside, our lungs full of winter air and our cheeks windslapped red.

My first bike crash is at the hands of our neighborhood bully. I am 4 or 5 years old, riding my red tricycle down the uneven sidewalk, back and forth between my front drive and the tree that marks the end of our property. She is there, behind the tree, waiting for me. She steps out as I approach, hands on hips and announces I can go no further. I pay her no mind as I try to move past. She knocks me off my tricycle and I run home, blood running on my knees and elbows. I get patched up and run back outside for another go. She knocks me off again and again and each time I go to my mother for bandaids. After three rounds my mother says, “no more”, and I feel the bully has won.
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It is the summer of my 7th year and I have my first two-wheel bike. The grass is vivid, soft and damp under my tires. My father runs alongside holding the back of the seat, and suddenly I am flying down the grassy hill of our backyard. I look back to grin proudly at my father and he grins back…one proud moment before the crash. My father is running but I am laughing…exhilerated.
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I am flying down the road, trees whipping past, a pack of my friends behind me on their bikes. We are so fast and I am leading them. Old Mr. Peabody is standing on the side of the road and his dog that yips all day and night sits on the other side, a white ball of fur and teeth. Mr. Peabody calls him just as I streak past. My front tire hits fur and bone and my face meets the pavement. Thankfully the four bloody teeth I spit out are baby teeth.
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Our driveway is a gravel paved U. I am still naive to the pitfalls of bike riding and do not realize that gravel gives way under fast, cornering tires. As I speed into the turn of our drive, the front tire jerks to the left and I cannot hold it. I crash in a great display of scraping and flying dust. When I pull up my shirt to inspect the damage there is gravel embedded in the angry red gashes across my ribs.