“Under the fence, catch the sheep, back we go, and off we leap!” It’s a way to remember the steps in knitting. My daughters and I went to a class for beginners last week. This was more fun than I expected 🙂 Things that involve multiple steps are not easy for me in general.
For the better part of an hour, I was just staring at my hands and the instructor’s hands. I was thinking, “I’m hearing words, but this is not making sense.”
Always good to get a reminder of how it feels when learning something new. After 7 years of doing my job, I have things that to me seem pretty basic. But looking at the knitting instructor, wearing a beautiful sweater that she made herself, I could see how skills build and its hard to realize how far we’ve come. She did a great job staying calm while I fumbled the steps and my girls picked knitting up within minutes.
It’s cold today. One degree. The kids were outside playing with their friends for as long as they could. Impressive. I haven’t even changed out of my, “I will start working when my coffee does” Pajamas. I read Fiona a couple of Berenstain Bear books when we first woke up. Fiona can read most of it, but she still pretends that she can’t to get me to do it. I can get that. Sometimes, I lay on the floor of the kid’s room when Randy reads a longer book to them. Its nice to hear someone reading out-loud.
I write a short email to a trainer who taught an online course about screening for domestic violence. I ask for referrals for parenting/custody evaluators in our area. This is a job that parents ask me to do, but I checked into it with the AAMFT (American Associate for Marriage and Family Therapy) and this is definitely not part of my job. I feel bad, because if I can’t help someone I like to be able to refer them to someone who can help. I put these categories onto my computer and in a filing cabinet at work of resources and supports. Sometimes, I remember my grandma who worked in a library before she had 8 kids.
I wonder if this is how she felt, just compelled to get people the knowledge and skills each of us so desperately need.
I talk to my retired co-worker and friend, earlier this week, and he says that he continues on helping others to the best of his ability. This is the job of us all.
Sometimes, people come to me and say they can’t work anymore. This is also not my role. I refer them to an agency that can evaluate whether or not they can still maintain employment. Its not that I don’t believe they are in real physical and mental pain.
Its that I don’t believe there is anyone alive that doesn’t work.
We all work.
Sometimes, we don’t get paid for it. But work flows through our veins forever. “Work” isn’t even a good enough word to describe the internal desire to build, connect, help, invent, and grow together. People who attempt to stop don’t fair well.
I volunteer at an after school program some of the days. I can bring my kids, so it’s really a win/win. We baked homemade gram crackers yesterday in the home ec room. It was fun to hear the kids laughing and talking and even squabbling at times. The teacher running the baking class tells me I can head out, but I’m not up for leaving her with the mess at the end. I make my kids to stay and help, even though they grumble at first. There is a difference between right and wrong. My kids have happy faces as they run down the halls on the way out.
For who can resist an empty hallway?
Love,
Terra Rose
Life Without Montages 