Necklace!
I finished the necklace last week, and just finished the scrapbook that goes with it.
The last four days have been a frantic scramble to get 20 pages printed, cut, laid out, and stuck down with no more supplies than what I have around the house.
I don't even have a camera to take pictures of the necklace with.
However, I'm clever enough to make do with a scanner.
Check it out!
Here are two larger pictures, a bigger version of the above picture, and one on a black background.
My contribution was the Egyptian snake charm, naturally, and my husband's is the runestone right next to it.
Anyway, Mom is not feeling well. Apparently this chemotherapy is disagreeing with her worse than the last round. She's very sick and weak, and neuropathy has set in in her hands and feet - she can't feel them so well. I know this bothers her a lot - she's like me, and works with her hands all the time.
I have to take her the necklace and the book tonight. And I really don't know how I'm going to do this.
We're not a demonstrative family. We can express our feelings in one-sided statements, "I love you," "I am angry," "I'm upset." But anything beyond that, anything requiring a response, doesn't happen. We can say "I love you," but actual emotional conversation does not happen.
I'm afraid of how she'll react, of how I'll react.
On the one hand, I'm afraid it will upset her, make her cry. I mean, if anything is going to be triggering, the book and necklace double-whammy combo is going to do it.
And she's so sick . . . barely able to talk on the phone. I'm so worried about her. Should I be taxing her like this emotionally when she's so physically fragile? And I don't think I can handle watching her cry. I don't want to upset her, but I can't not give it to her.
I suppose if she breaks down and cries, at least I'll know it meant something to her.
I'm even more afraid, I think, that she'll look at it and say something like "Oh, thanks. That's nice," while dismissing it in her mind as juvenile and meaningless, or, worse, as a token gesture of emotions I don't feel -- if I cared as much as I say I do, wouldn't I see her more often, and not just twice a month or so?
I feel silly. I'm naturally snarky and funny, as you all know. I'm snide, sidelong, silly, smirking, sarcastic. All those fun S-words. But what I'm trying to do for her here isn't like me. It's not backhandedly funny. It's not a joke. It's painfully earnest.
It's another S-word, one I don't like, because it also applies to things like baby books and Precious Moments figurines. It's sentimental.
Something sentimental is a kind of physical or verbal shorthand for a series of emotional responses . . . a trigger, or a symbol, sometimes shallow by itself but meant to remind you of deeper things.
Have I talked about how we are with deep emotions in my family?
Yeah.
I'm just afraid she won't see beyond the 6th-grade idea and the cheap execution. I didn't have much in the way of money for supplies, since my sister said she'd get them for me, and ended up not doing it. I used printer paper and double-stick tape to make the page headings and captions, and I used what photographs I had around the house to illustrate it, since hardly anyone sent pictures.
Bound up in the photo album, it looks nice, but it's a sad kind of nice, like something a Pentecostal 14-year-old would come up with, only without even glitter or paper doilies. I'm afraid Mom won't understand what I tried to do. And if she doesn't understand it, then what I tried to do failed.
I mean, I'll still have it someday as a nice souvenir. But again, that's cold comfort.
I'm pretty sure that, as long as she's not too doped up, she'll be appreciative, and this is all just hand-waving, mawkish maundering. Last-minute jitters.
So feel free to ignore it. It's pretty much moot, anyway . . . by the time I'm able to read most of the comments, I'll have done it, anyway.
I'm off to bake cookies (recipe forthcoming) and finish up my present wrapping. I might post again a little later, since I have a catch-up entry all written about the solstice party and such.
Until then, or if I don't post again: have a happy holiday, and drive safe!
link
The last four days have been a frantic scramble to get 20 pages printed, cut, laid out, and stuck down with no more supplies than what I have around the house.
I don't even have a camera to take pictures of the necklace with.
However, I'm clever enough to make do with a scanner.
Check it out!
Here are two larger pictures, a bigger version of the above picture, and one on a black background.
My contribution was the Egyptian snake charm, naturally, and my husband's is the runestone right next to it.
Anyway, Mom is not feeling well. Apparently this chemotherapy is disagreeing with her worse than the last round. She's very sick and weak, and neuropathy has set in in her hands and feet - she can't feel them so well. I know this bothers her a lot - she's like me, and works with her hands all the time.
I have to take her the necklace and the book tonight. And I really don't know how I'm going to do this.
We're not a demonstrative family. We can express our feelings in one-sided statements, "I love you," "I am angry," "I'm upset." But anything beyond that, anything requiring a response, doesn't happen. We can say "I love you," but actual emotional conversation does not happen.
I'm afraid of how she'll react, of how I'll react.
On the one hand, I'm afraid it will upset her, make her cry. I mean, if anything is going to be triggering, the book and necklace double-whammy combo is going to do it.
And she's so sick . . . barely able to talk on the phone. I'm so worried about her. Should I be taxing her like this emotionally when she's so physically fragile? And I don't think I can handle watching her cry. I don't want to upset her, but I can't not give it to her.
I suppose if she breaks down and cries, at least I'll know it meant something to her.
I'm even more afraid, I think, that she'll look at it and say something like "Oh, thanks. That's nice," while dismissing it in her mind as juvenile and meaningless, or, worse, as a token gesture of emotions I don't feel -- if I cared as much as I say I do, wouldn't I see her more often, and not just twice a month or so?
I feel silly. I'm naturally snarky and funny, as you all know. I'm snide, sidelong, silly, smirking, sarcastic. All those fun S-words. But what I'm trying to do for her here isn't like me. It's not backhandedly funny. It's not a joke. It's painfully earnest.
It's another S-word, one I don't like, because it also applies to things like baby books and Precious Moments figurines. It's sentimental.
Something sentimental is a kind of physical or verbal shorthand for a series of emotional responses . . . a trigger, or a symbol, sometimes shallow by itself but meant to remind you of deeper things.
Have I talked about how we are with deep emotions in my family?
Yeah.
I'm just afraid she won't see beyond the 6th-grade idea and the cheap execution. I didn't have much in the way of money for supplies, since my sister said she'd get them for me, and ended up not doing it. I used printer paper and double-stick tape to make the page headings and captions, and I used what photographs I had around the house to illustrate it, since hardly anyone sent pictures.
Bound up in the photo album, it looks nice, but it's a sad kind of nice, like something a Pentecostal 14-year-old would come up with, only without even glitter or paper doilies. I'm afraid Mom won't understand what I tried to do. And if she doesn't understand it, then what I tried to do failed.
I mean, I'll still have it someday as a nice souvenir. But again, that's cold comfort.
I'm pretty sure that, as long as she's not too doped up, she'll be appreciative, and this is all just hand-waving, mawkish maundering. Last-minute jitters.
So feel free to ignore it. It's pretty much moot, anyway . . . by the time I'm able to read most of the comments, I'll have done it, anyway.
I'm off to bake cookies (recipe forthcoming) and finish up my present wrapping. I might post again a little later, since I have a catch-up entry all written about the solstice party and such.
Until then, or if I don't post again: have a happy holiday, and drive safe!
link