I was completely lost. In ten years I have managed to accumulate a lot stuff down there. I was stunned, absolutely stunned to see all the unstarted ideas and projects. It was frightening to see all the ones that I had started and put down for a minute while life got in the way. Covered in dust.
This morning I came face to face with piles of projects. There is needlework, quilts in various stages, yarn bought for projects never started, roving still waiting to be spun and homespun waiting to have something made out of it. I was so amazed... so overwhelmed.
Standing there digging through the piles of projects looking for just the right one to take with me, I realized I needed to start completing things. I realized that I needed to stop looking for new projects, and start completing all the old ones.
What drove it home even more was the project I picked... After looking through everything that was piled around my space, all the treasures I had started and never finished, the project I ultimately chose to work on was started over 50 years ago, by my great-grandmother. Given to me by my Grammie with her hand written instructions on what Great Grandma had planned when she started it all those decades ago. It is beautiful work, as I run my fingers over the hand stitches I am connected in a deep way to family roots that run deep. I am blessed to have these pieces of the past, of my past to complete. I started to wonder, 50 years from now, is anyone going to lovingly caress my unfinished projects. Will a descendant of mine want to connect with me and finish my projects? Or will all the things that are important to me simply be tossed in a bag and sent off to Goodwill for someone else to pick up and finish.
That idea simply makes me ill.
I opened one box, it's my nine-patch box... I remembered starting it, but not the rest of the story... a lot has happened since that box was first created. There are large parts of time that I can't pull out of the fog, luckily a sweet lady named Dawn had written me a letter from Japan when she mailed some blocks to me. It told me the things I had forgotten. It filled in some of the blanks. Some of the ladies that made blocks in that box have passed away. All have left my life, the military and life moved us all on. But I remembered, sitting there digging through that box, our Sunday quilting group, bottles of wine, laughter and being part of something bigger.
I am heading out tonight for the weekend. I probably will have no internet connection, so my posts won't happen until I get home on Monday. I think during that time, while I am enjoying my place of peace, in between fishing, card games, swimming and campfires with my sweet hubby, boys and grand baby and unwinding I am going to spend time working on the two projects that I have taken with me.
This girl needs to get uninterrupted...
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