Weaving The Dream

This past weekend was my last craft show.

Wow!  I say that and then I want to put all kinds of qualifiers around it.  Like maybe it was the last craft show in Virginia.  Or maybe it was the last craft show for the foreseeable future.  After all, I have been exhibiting at craft shows, both wholesale and retail for 15 years. 

Putting an end to something we have invested a lot of time and energy into is difficult, especially when it is a relationship, business, or career.  Who we are, how we think the world sees us, and our source of challenge, growth, and fulfillment can get too tied up in things outside ourselves.

And I did put a lot of time and energy into growing the business.  I was office manager, marketing and sales person, and shipping clerk as well as designer and weaver.  I spent most of the 10 hours per day, at least six days a week winding warp, threading looms, weaving, and tying and re-tying fringe.  I often spent three or four nights before a show awake until 2 in the morning to finish work and ready it for my display, making sure seams were straight, threads were snipped, and labels applied.

While my business was successful enough to pay the business’s bills and make payments on the college loans my husband and I took out for our three sons, I never made enough of an income to support myself or anyone else.  My husband did that.  But the business, especially the shows, provided other benefits, usually intangible.

The craft show circuit provided a place of community, learning, and growth.  As a weaver and writer, it is too easy for me to isolate myself in my woodland studio and forget the world.  Going to shows in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, Sarasota, Boston, and Washington DC allowed me to move out into a world of new sights, sounds, and tastes, and meet new people.  The show circuit also forced me to learn the importance of niche marketing and not under-pricing your work, how to engage and understand the needs of your customer, and to get over my fears of driving in unfamiliar and heavily trafficked areas.

While at the shows, I discovered and acquired clothing, jewelry, gifts, and art to decorate my home that I would never have otherwise.

Being part of the show circuit also gave me an opportunity to spread my wings as a writer, as I wrote artist profiles and business articles for two different professional crafts business magazines and thereby acquired credentials to write for other publications.

Our sons learned the value of careers that don’t involve a 9-5 routine, that allow some measure of independence, and that value things like creativity, passion, and exploration.

Most of all, being part of the craft show community meant meeting and making friends of some incredible people, all with unique stories, a strong desire for independence, and a passion for fine crafts.

Also, through the experiences of the show circuit, I found myself encouraging others to explore their creativity as they stood in my booth and said “I am not creative,” which led to my study and practice of creativity coaching; I spent months and years weaving, giving me the inspiration and knowledge to write Weaving a Woman’s Life: Spiritual Lessons from the Loom; and I couldn’t help but see that though we all start with the same materials, the miracle that is the human brain allows us to create with those materials in defiantly unique ways.  And it is because of the gifts of these experiences that I am ready to grow a new career, a new business.

I will still travel to new places and meet new people, but now I will be sharing weavings of another sort—the weaving of words and events through writing and speaking and coaching.  I want to teach and share with others the magic of dreams, the passionate joy of creativity, and the mystical delight of connecting to the spiritual self.

Will I continue to weave and sell my weaving? Absolutely!  At conferences, workshops, online, and from my studio.  So don’t hesitate to email me if you want a shawl for meditation, or a scarf for your mother.  The weaving I do now will be custom—for you.  It will now just be part of all I do—not all I do.

So I walked out of the show on Sunday after packing up my booth with the help of my son and his fiancée, and I knew I was doing the right thing because I felt no regret, only excitement for new possibilities.  And immense gratefulness to a business and community that gave me so much. 

When I was about six or seven years old, my mother taught me how to spell “procrastinate.”  Why?

Well, apparently I began at that early age to practice how to do it—procrastinate—and continued to practice all through elementary school, high school, and right through college, although I did make rare attempts to stop, and practice planning and completing ahead of time instead.

Not that I didn’t like school and schoolwork, you understand.  I loved school.  In fact, I was one of those annoying kids that was upset when school was closed due to weather.

I just always found so many other things to do instead that were either easier to do or more entertaining or were more important, so that the school assignment or paper fell further and further down on my list of things to do until it was due the next day and suddenly—can you beat that?—it shot to the top of the list.

Unfortunately, at that young age, even though I was very good at procrastinating—I did not realize that procrastinating is not viewed as one of the seven habits of highly effective people.  But, since my mother had anchored that word in my brain by making me learn how to spell it with all its 13 (ah, unlucky number of) letters, I at least was aware when I was doing it.

The thing is, when my mother taught me how to spell it she also taught me this was not a good thing to do.  It could get me in trouble.  As a child, that usually meant an unhappy adult was involved.

And I could see her point because after all, staying up until 4 in the morning to finish a term paper while imbibing huge amounts of caffeine was not fun after the first two or three times, and shipping out scarves to a shop after the Christmas rush does not make for a happy customer.

Still, procrastination has its benefits as well as its drawbacks.  Really. 

In the finest tradition of Scarlett O’Hara, some things should be put off until tomorrow.  And with good reason. In my mind, or yours, some tasks can seem unimportant and requiring just too much effort.  For instance…

Cleaning the oven.  I am a champion at putting that one off.  I can procrastinate on that until something inside ignites or we buy a new one, whichever comes first.  And why not?  After all, the food I am cooking doesn’t have to touch the bottom, top, or sides of the oven, and generally, it doesn’t even have to touch the racks, so unless what I am baking bubbles up and over its container and starts to smoke and thereby set off the smoke alarm, there is simply no good reason to clean the oven.  I like that slightly charcoal patina it builds up.  And just think about how much time and energy I save by NOT cleaning the oven…Time I can spend writing or weaving or reading, or doing a whole host of more important or fun things instead!

So, one good reason to procrastinate: you have better things to do.  And, if you put off doing it long enough, the project, assignment, or task will just disappear.

Or go up in flames!

In my dream, I help two of my adult sons sort and clean out the accumulated toys, papers, and mementos of their childhood in a room that looks and feels like my childhood bedroom, when the third son walks in and asks if his stuffed animal is in here.

In waking life, that stuffed animal was a constant companion to my son from infancy through most of elementary school.  His fuzzy companion traveled next to him in the car to the grocery store and on long trips to my parents.  He was carried from room to room in our house and then tucked next to him in bed at night. 

In the dream, I point out the animal, high on a shelf behind some other childhood treasures.  My son pushes aside the stuffed sock clown, and lunchbox-sized vinyl case to pull down his old friend. The vinyl case falls on his head but doesn’t hurt him.  With the animal in his arms, my son is no longer the tall adult but once again a child, his head the height of my waist.

“Mommy,” he says, “he is so clean!”

“I washed him for you,” I say.  Then suddenly my son has the animal crushed against his chest and is crying.  I know, in the dream, that he cries tears of happiness at recovering this beloved part of his childhood.  I hug him to me, comforting him.

I wake up.

Practicing what I teach others, I name the dream “Reclaiming a Childhood Toy.”

Of course, that stuffed animal was more than a toy to my quiet, introverted son—it was companion, pretend playmate, holder of secrets and fears.  Amulet, touchstone, and lodestone all in one huggable being of fake fur and stuffing.

Though the dream seems to be about my son, and on one level it may be, I also know that the dream is very much and more about me.

For one thing, the dream occurs, not in my sons’ bedrooms, but in my childhood bedroom.  The lunchbox-sized vinyl case that falls on my son looks very much like the case in which I kept my favorite doll, Besty McCall, and her clothes.  That case sits in my adult bedroom as I write…

Too, my son and I share the same astrological sign—we are both Leos.

So how is the dream about me?  Well, as we say in dream circle, if this dream were my dream (and it is), I would think that, in fact, I am clearing out things from the past that no longer serve me – that I have grown beyond.  BUT—and this is an important but—while I may put away the things from childhood that no longer serve me, it is also a necessary and healthy thing, especially for the life and well-being of my creativity, to hold onto the amulets, touchstones, and lodestones of childhood imagination, and thereby hold on to that precious inner child.

My son’s tears of joy in the dream were for a rediscovered part of his childhood—the part that held his imagination and inner peace and contentment, all things that we struggle to attain and maintain, especially as creative adults.

Could this be one of the cures for creative block?  To find a toy or some other beloved object from our childhood that can invoke the joy of being a child again while reminding us of the creative power of our imagination?

So, what am I going to do to honor the dream?  Well, I am going upstairs to get out that doll case…

My husband, Bob, and I just returned from attending the wedding of the oldest son of our good friends, Bill and Patty.  Like us, they have three boys and this is the first son to marry.  We were excited for them and for us since our oldest son will be married later this fall.

For a number of reasons, Patty had much of the responsibility for organizing and preparing for the wedding and reception.  Her loving care and efforts were evident in everything from the organist to the wedding program, and to the reception in the church hall afterwards.  There, Patty had recruited friends and neighbors to help decorate the tables as well as prepare and serve the food and beverages for the buffet.

During the ceremony, as Bill and Patty watched their son repeat the age-old vow promising to love, honor, and cherish his new bride with his “I do!” I couldn’t help but think about how Patty and Bill first had to say, “I do”, to Mike and his brothers.  For in giving birth, the most powerful creative act for many women, we must say, “I do,” promising to love, honor, and cherish our children, without reserve and often without reward.

As I mentioned in a previous post, commitment is a scary thing whether to the children of our wombs or the children of our inspiration. Like our flesh and bones children, our creative children also need us to say, “I do.” If our songs, our paintings, our novels, our weavings are to have life, find a home, and grow into the fullness of their potential, we must commit to giving them our love and our respect without reserve – and often without reward.

The challenge, of course, is to keep saying, “I do” when we are tired, short-tempered, and frustrated, to continue to love and honor our efforts to create what has meaning, beauty, and significance even in the face of criticism or failure.  Our creativity is sacred whether it manifests in our children or in our creative work, and we are called to give it everything we have.

As we sat next to Patty’s sister waiting for the wedding to begin, she shared with me that Mike told her, “Mom has always been there for me for 28 years.”  Mike truly understood and appreciated the selfless, unstinting love his mother had given him, still hearing the echoes of her “I do,” even 28 years later.

So I wonder…Can I promise to love, honor, and cherish my creative work in frustration and disappointment?  Can I be as selfless in my creativity as Patty was in preparing that wedding for her son?  Can I say, “I do,” to my creativity?

After the ceremony, as the bride and groom made their way down the aisle greeting their guests, Mike hugged his mom fiercely to him, tears of relief and love and joy on both their faces.

And I would guess that, for Patty, that was reward enough!