Weaving The Dream

Yesterday I received an email from the husband of a weaving customer of mine.  He works for the Library of Congress and had discovered that my book, Weaving a Woman’s Life: Spiritual Lessons from the Loom, was there, properly catalogued and shelved.

Wow! I thought.  My book.  In the Library of Congress, where my sons can find it and, when the day comes, their children can find it as well.  When I shared this delightful information with a friend, she said it was one of my legacies.

And that got me thinking about the word legacy—something handed down by a predecessor, sometimes a gift in a will.  Something we leave behind for others.

My house is filled with legacies.  There are the paintings and sculpture created by my mother who died of breast cancer at the age of 53.  An avid antique buyer and collector, she also left me the large Early American china cabinet in our dining room, my collection of antique sewing collectibles, and the oak washstand in our family room, among many other things.

My father gave me the small, etched water glass that belonged to his grandmother bearing her name, Cornelia, and “Chautauqua 1895”.  I also have the oak kitchen table that belonged to my father’s mother and father, which he and his sisters used to run and hide under when they were growing up.  My paternal grandfather gave me the mantle clock that sat in his parlor but didn’t run.  Years after my grandfather’s death, my father repaired it and it now sits ticking on our mantle.

As a young girl, I always longed for a vanity table.  After my mother’s aunt died, I received one of hers along with the mirrored tray, hand mirror, and face powder holder.

The interesting thing about legacies is that you usually don’t just receive the item—you also receive the memories about the person who handed it down.  In this way, a small part of his or her spirit or presence remains in your life.

One of the best examples of this, and for me one of the legacies I treasure most is the collection of daylilies my father has given me.  An avid aficionado, my father has raised and bred daylilies for years, even earning certification as a daylily judge.  His flowerbeds trumpet over 50 types of daylilies.

Knowing that he and my stepmother intend to move soon, last year he carefully went through and divided his daylilies to give me fans or rootings of each type.  Some I planted last year and some are still waiting in pots for their permanent homes.

They are in full bloom right now, many of them, and I perambulate along their beds, talking to them, complimenting them on their exquisite beauty, removing the spent blooms, and all the time, I am thinking of my father and the care and commitment he gave to these flowers. 

Like the lilies, if given care and commitment, our children are living legacies.  How we raise them, who they become as people can affect family, friends, communities, and the world well into the Future.  My three loving, compassionate, creative sons are my and my husband’s most significant legacy.

Legacies are important.  They provide connection and foundation for the present and the future.  They can give us something to hold onto or push away from.

What legacies have been passed down to you?  What are you leaving behind for others?

Okay, this is bad.  This is really bad.  After all I read about keeping my blog up to date and blogging at least two or three times a week, it has been just over two months since my last entry.  Two months!

And every time the doorbell rings (well, it doesn’t, actually, since it is broken) or the phone rings, then I worry that the Blog Squad (Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman, www.buildabetterblog.com) have arrived to carry me off to jail for fraud and failure to follow through.

I could say that my long absence here was due to that rejection previously noted in the last entry but truthfully, rejection doesn’t immobilize me for long.

I could also say that June was the month where I felt like Lucy in the chocolate factory.  For those of you too young to remember that classic episode, she and Ethel take a job on a chocolate production line.  The belt carrying the chocolates moves faster and faster past them until they can’t keep up.  First they stuff the extras in their mouths (every woman’s dream), but then, when that doesn’t solve the problem, they stash them any place they can find—their apron pockets, their bras, etc.  The perfect example of too much of a good thing.  That was me in June.

I barely had time to recover from the excitement of attending BEA (Book Expo America) in New York the very first weekend of June and meeting with a couple of agents and publishers, then I was off to Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York to teach dreamwork at the International Women’s Writing Guild conference.  And let me just say here that if you are female and have ever considered the idea of writing, this conference is the place to be for stimulation, motivation, and amazing friendships.

On top of it all was a huge writing assignment on Empty Nesters for an online magazine, which promises good exposure and reasonable pay, but kind of killed my desire to write anything else during that time.  (I now consider myself, however, an expert on the Empty Nest!)

Then there was my daughter-in-law-to-be’s bridal shower…  You get the picture.

And the more time that went by, the harder it became to settle back into blogging.  And the guiltier I felt.  And the guiltier I felt, the less I felt like writing and the more time went by.  And the more time went by…well, you get the picture.

Of course, the best way to beat guilt and procrastination is to take action.  So here I am.

And the lesson?  The lesson is that any habit, any discipline, any craft, takes consistency.  The minute you fall out of your habit/discipline/craft, you have to start all over again to build up the rhythm, the motion, that forward drive.

So I am kind of starting all over again.  And now that I have, I have ideas and topics lining up, crowding around, shouting, “Me! Pick me!  Write about me!”

Sigh!  Feels good…and I hope this will convince the Blog Squad to give me probation…