e been“If one has only one good memory left in one’s heart,
even that may be the means of saving us.”
(Fyodor Dostoyevski)
I’ve been working on a cross-stitch bookmarker for myself, to mark this new era of peace in my life – it’s an affirmation on fine fabric in silk threads.
I’ve done larger cross-stitch pieces before: a sampler for Sophie’s dining room, and a picture of Pussywillow that I’d had transferred from a photograph to a cross-stitch pattern through the marvels of computer technology. But this is a smaller and more intricate piece than anything else I’ve ever worked on before: thirty-two stitches to the inch, sixteen colours that are often blended together to a total of forty-two possible combinations.
I found the background pattern in a needlework book that Sophie gave me for Christmas the year after I made her the sampler; she said it was her way of encouraging the artist in me. This particular pattern is like the illuminated texts of ancient writings: the four corners dripping with splendid designs and curlicues, overlaid with outlines in gold and silver. The fancy work incorporates the first letter of my name, raising the letter and the name itself to a level of magnificence that no longer embarrasses me. The bookmark says: “Starla is at Peace. Amen.” So be it.
It’s an important message to myself that, like any affirmation, need only be partially true to be of value to me. I don’t expect complete peace at all times, but there’s a new serenity that has introduced me to hope, a concept that has always been very foreign to me.
I look at my hands as I work the delicate threads through the tiny holes of the woven cloth and I see my mother’s hands at the end of my mother’s arms and I have difficulty imagining her involved in such a precise and focused task. I always imagine her hands and her arms in large, expansive movements: waving when dancing; reaching, stretching, kneeding when baking; flailing, punching and slapping when ranting. My mother’s arms were made for squeezing in a hug that was too tight; she seldom embraced with gentleness.
It disturbs me that in recognizing my mother’s hands and arms, I am forced to acknowledge that I am of her, and that there are parts of my body that feel as if they are my own, yet can repel me in what they hint at. These little spontaneous reactions are so natural that they’ve gone unnoticed for all these years. It’s time to start noticing their importance in how I see myself.
Of all the components of my genetic background, I’ve always feared mom’s fury the most. I analyze every mood that I suffer, wondering if this bout of sadness or that period of nervous anxiety is the opening act to a life beyond the borders of madness from which I’ll not retrieve myself? Without ever speaking of it, I’ve known for so long that many forms of mental illness show themselves during the teens and twenties. I look to my thirtieth birthday, just a few months away now, as a beacon of light (and again, dare I say hope), signaling that maybe I’ve made it through the gauntlet of those threatening years, sane and whole, having outrun the beast of her madness.
In my concentration and focus on the minute details of the patterned cross-stitch, I see Bill’s precision and attention to the details of his work that have made him the good lawyer that he has become. He negotiates and advises; he juggles schedules, documents, briefs and precedents in his head with calm and deliberate focus, as if they were components of a complex toy to be balanced, until he plucks one from his mind and inserts it precisely into the appropriate niche of his patterned argument.
But Bill has another side too. His heart is big and soft – perhaps too much so, and when he feels pain, it’s so profound that it takes him to places that have frightened me. At these times, it’s only by losing himself in the focus of his work that he can climb from those depths to find distraction from his pain.
It’s strange to think of them as my mother and my father; I so seldom remember them together. It’s been such a long time since they were a couple whose cosmic and genetic paths crossed to produce Claire and me.
I wonder what traits I have from other people in my past. Sophie says that I have her Granny’s eyes and hair. In this new peace that I’m experiencing, I find the curiosity and the courage to imagine Bill’s family: his parents, aunts and uncles, siblings – I see them as real people now, rising from beneath the cloud that Bill has used to shroud them since he left home over thirty years ago to avoid going to Vietnam. No doubt, he’s had his reasons for keeping us apart, but I wonder if he was protecting me, or simply nursing his own anger and the wounds that run so deep as to seem natural and necessary, even after all these years.
Of all the people that I know in my family tree, I want to believe that there is more of Sophie in me than anyone else. Sophie: stable, caring, competent, loving and balanced. Sophie: the home to which I return, the light for which I’ve been so grateful, the model on whom I’m building the image of who I want to be.
As long as I’ve known her, Sophie was my light, the one constant. No matter how far away she was at certain times of my life, she always held the directional compass that was able to point a way for me. She was the one person (until Danny) who has loved me unconditionally and believed in aspects of me that I couldn’t even see, much less acknowledge in myself.
Sophie is a gift that has been given to me. Who would I hav without her?
Copyright 2003
even that may be the means of saving us.”
(Fyodor Dostoyevski)
I’ve been working on a cross-stitch bookmarker for myself, to mark this new era of peace in my life – it’s an affirmation on fine fabric in silk threads.
I’ve done larger cross-stitch pieces before: a sampler for Sophie’s dining room, and a picture of Pussywillow that I’d had transferred from a photograph to a cross-stitch pattern through the marvels of computer technology. But this is a smaller and more intricate piece than anything else I’ve ever worked on before: thirty-two stitches to the inch, sixteen colours that are often blended together to a total of forty-two possible combinations.
I found the background pattern in a needlework book that Sophie gave me for Christmas the year after I made her the sampler; she said it was her way of encouraging the artist in me. This particular pattern is like the illuminated texts of ancient writings: the four corners dripping with splendid designs and curlicues, overlaid with outlines in gold and silver. The fancy work incorporates the first letter of my name, raising the letter and the name itself to a level of magnificence that no longer embarrasses me. The bookmark says: “Starla is at Peace. Amen.” So be it.
It’s an important message to myself that, like any affirmation, need only be partially true to be of value to me. I don’t expect complete peace at all times, but there’s a new serenity that has introduced me to hope, a concept that has always been very foreign to me.
I look at my hands as I work the delicate threads through the tiny holes of the woven cloth and I see my mother’s hands at the end of my mother’s arms and I have difficulty imagining her involved in such a precise and focused task. I always imagine her hands and her arms in large, expansive movements: waving when dancing; reaching, stretching, kneeding when baking; flailing, punching and slapping when ranting. My mother’s arms were made for squeezing in a hug that was too tight; she seldom embraced with gentleness.
It disturbs me that in recognizing my mother’s hands and arms, I am forced to acknowledge that I am of her, and that there are parts of my body that feel as if they are my own, yet can repel me in what they hint at. These little spontaneous reactions are so natural that they’ve gone unnoticed for all these years. It’s time to start noticing their importance in how I see myself.
Of all the components of my genetic background, I’ve always feared mom’s fury the most. I analyze every mood that I suffer, wondering if this bout of sadness or that period of nervous anxiety is the opening act to a life beyond the borders of madness from which I’ll not retrieve myself? Without ever speaking of it, I’ve known for so long that many forms of mental illness show themselves during the teens and twenties. I look to my thirtieth birthday, just a few months away now, as a beacon of light (and again, dare I say hope), signaling that maybe I’ve made it through the gauntlet of those threatening years, sane and whole, having outrun the beast of her madness.
In my concentration and focus on the minute details of the patterned cross-stitch, I see Bill’s precision and attention to the details of his work that have made him the good lawyer that he has become. He negotiates and advises; he juggles schedules, documents, briefs and precedents in his head with calm and deliberate focus, as if they were components of a complex toy to be balanced, until he plucks one from his mind and inserts it precisely into the appropriate niche of his patterned argument.
But Bill has another side too. His heart is big and soft – perhaps too much so, and when he feels pain, it’s so profound that it takes him to places that have frightened me. At these times, it’s only by losing himself in the focus of his work that he can climb from those depths to find distraction from his pain.
It’s strange to think of them as my mother and my father; I so seldom remember them together. It’s been such a long time since they were a couple whose cosmic and genetic paths crossed to produce Claire and me.
I wonder what traits I have from other people in my past. Sophie says that I have her Granny’s eyes and hair. In this new peace that I’m experiencing, I find the curiosity and the courage to imagine Bill’s family: his parents, aunts and uncles, siblings – I see them as real people now, rising from beneath the cloud that Bill has used to shroud them since he left home over thirty years ago to avoid going to Vietnam. No doubt, he’s had his reasons for keeping us apart, but I wonder if he was protecting me, or simply nursing his own anger and the wounds that run so deep as to seem natural and necessary, even after all these years.
Of all the people that I know in my family tree, I want to believe that there is more of Sophie in me than anyone else. Sophie: stable, caring, competent, loving and balanced. Sophie: the home to which I return, the light for which I’ve been so grateful, the model on whom I’m building the image of who I want to be.
As long as I’ve known her, Sophie was my light, the one constant. No matter how far away she was at certain times of my life, she always held the directional compass that was able to point a way for me. She was the one person (until Danny) who has loved me unconditionally and believed in aspects of me that I couldn’t even see, much less acknowledge in myself.
Sophie is a gift that has been given to me. Who would I hav without her?
