Times Two

When I was kid, I used to think it was funny that my mom would buy two of everything when it came to her clothes and shoes. Truth be told, I thought it was a little bit nerdy. Today, I was packing for a trip I'm taking next week with my sisters and I stopped to survey the clothes I had laid out on the bed. I started to laugh -there was a dress sweater, in 4 colors; a turtleneck, in 5 colors; Bill Blass jeans in 3 colors; and a blazer in 4 different colors. Add that to my shoes in 3 different colors, and I've turned into my mother. My only spark of individuality (very small ) shows in my T-shirt selections of things near and dear to my heart - Hall and Oates, Quilting, the Pens and the Steelers, and Stone Harbor. When does that happen - that we morph into our mothers? There was a time when I dreaded the thought. Today, I welcome it. For my mom was someone I admired greatly for so many reasons. And now that she's gone, I savor anything that brings me a little bit closer to being like her.

So speaking of our trip, my sisters and I are going to Iceland. It's about 20 degrees colder there than it is here, so it's like packing for winter before it arrives. I think the photo opportunities will be gorgeous and can't wait to use my new camera there. We're going whale watching and will see geysers and swim in the Blue Lagoon. If we're lucky we may even see the Aurora Borealis in the night sky from Reykjavik. Our flight departs from Boston, so we're stopping there for 2 days and visiting a friend of my sisters.

It's been an interesting political week and I must say, the best part of it was that it deflected media coverage from the OJ trial (thank goodness!) I am glad there are only 30 days till the election. I hate the nastiness these elections get into - the outright lies drive me crazy.

I'm about to quilt a friend's quilt on my quilt machine. I set it up tonight and hopefully will get a chance to work on it tomorrow. It should only take a couple hours if all goes right. It has an ocean theme, so I'm going to quilt some ocean waves on it. It felt good to be playing with fabric again. Oh, and I did scout out where there are quilt stores in Iceland. I figured I should check them out while I'm there.

mjs 10/4/08 11:35pm

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Upheaval

Well, the world seems in a political upheaval today, at least to me. And then my life, sometimes so calm, got a jolt today. My mother passed away in June of this year. I met a woman today who was her PT at one of the assisted living care facilities she lived in. The weird part was, I met her while I was on my job, taking photos of a senior care home, and in a part of town my mother wasn't even close to, and it was as if my worlds had collided (isn't that from a Seinfeld show?) We acknowledged one another and shared words of sympathy, which I appreciated, but I felt so odd. That moment when your work world and your private world meet one another and you are thrown off balance by forgetting who knows who and what they know about you.

My quilt circle meets tonight and I already know that the tactile sensation of fabric is a comfort to me. I look forward to touching cloth and smoothing it between my fingers, the way a child "jouggies" a blanket between their fingers while sucking their thumb. "Jouggy" is my family's word for it - I've discovered that different families have a different word for that action. Maybe someone can share with me what that is in their family.

I'm getting ready to go the beach tomorrow, so I won't be writing from there. I'll be enjoying the sun and the sand and the ocean breezes. Maybe I can figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

mjs

9.4.08 4:21 pm

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