My Mom can sew. Which is a wonderful, as the last thing I had to fix involving fabric was my feather-leaking duvet (which received a nice piece of duct tape as a repair). I am a grown, married, mother of three, yet my Mom still sews ripped seams, hems pants, makes dresses for my girls, and just about anything else I send her way requiring some needle and thread attention.
I can’t sew. I can’t knit. I can’t crochet. If truth be told, I only really learned how to cook about five years ago. Not that there haven’t been offers to teach me. My whole life has been filled with offers to teach me how to sew and knit from my Grandmas and my Mom. But I never picked it up. I was never interested.
Now I have kids. Now I’m interested. I would love to sew or knit them something amazing. And I could. If I learned how. But where to find the time? Maybe I should review my schedule.
6am – 8pm: keep three kids alive
8pm – 2am: work
2am – 6am: sleep
Hmmm…seems to be pretty full. I could carve out some time between 2am and 3am, but if it’s working with a needle of some sort, it may just end up in my eye. And we all know what happens when someone loses an eye.
My point? Ah yes, back to my point. My point is that while I will teach my kids many things, I will also not teach them many things. And some of the many things I will not teach my kids are actually things I wish I could teach my kids. Still following?
I spent my life so far working toward an education and a career. And in one fell swoop, all of that changed. I don’t regret my education or my career choices, but I do regret that in the pursuit of them, I didn’t stop to learn a few other things. Generational gifts, like knitting and sewing.
I think I’ll hop into my time machine and go back and knock some sense into the earlier version of myself. Because who wouldn’t listen to an older, more experienced, wiser, greyer, slightly wrinkled version of themselves? Aka, their Mother.
A married and messy Mom of three children three years old and under and Stepmom to a beautiful and fabulous teenager, Stephanie Choquette of Waterloo, Ontario co-owns (with her Mom!) an online e-tail store full of sassy stuff for spunky kids (www.thespottedmonkey.com) and has a dedicated following on her wildly popular blog called The Dirty Mommy Club (www.dirtymommyclub.com). She is currently on maternity leave from her corporate career.