On a wholly unrelated note, I found this in the toy chest at my parents house. A few years ago, I would have said, ‘what happened to her hand?’ Now we just call her limb different Barbie and move on.
About seven or eight years ago, I was having dinner with my Nana and her old lady friends. All of the women were at least in their eighties, a few in their nineties. The women started peppering me with questions. "Do you sew?" one of them asked. "No, ma 'am," I replied. "Bake your own bread?" another one inquired. Again, I shook my head. I think the ladies were starting to feel sorry for me, so one of them pitched me a softball, "How many children do you have?" At the time, we didn't have any, so I was forced to admit that to these ladies. "I work," I weakly eeked out. I don't think they were impressed.
This was a generation of women who had sewn many of their, and much of their children's, clothes and canned their own tomatoes. Contrary to what one might expect, most of these women at some point also held down jobs outside the home. They talked back and forth amongst themselves for a few minutes, reminiscing about baking and sewing, what they enjoyed, what they didn't. "I always did like creating something with my hands," one of the women commented before the conversation moved on.
I nodded along obligingly, secretly glad that I wasn't born to that era. I have always enjoyed cooking, but most days, I left early and got home late. The making of dinner wasn't for the enjoyment of the process but for the eating of the results. There was no need to darn socks or "put up" preserves, that's why the good Lord gave us Amazon and Trader Joes.
This summer our garden produced an abundance of zucchini and cucumbers, and we passed them out routinely. We literally handed them over the fence to the neighbors and loaded them in the car to give away while at church and school (all with my non-zuchinni loving husband shouting good riddance).
I got a strange sense of satisfaction from sharing something I'd grown with my own hands. Somehow it felt different than delivering casseroles or even our Yuletide gifts of homemade pot stickers. I think I finally know what my grandmothers' friends were talking about - they were talking about being more than a consumer.
I'm not about to end my relationship with the UPS man. We have a good thing going. He delivers directly to my door, tells me about the best Christmas lights in town and delights my kids by honking when he sees us out walking. But I am going to give a lot more thought to creating with my own hands. One-click purchasing with the mouse isn’t really the only skill I want to pass down.
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Want an easy create with your own hands project? These were both quite good.
Plus Ashley Ann talks about this same topic here.
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