Tag Archives: always learning

My very talented Mom

21 Friday Jan 2022

Posted by in Daily Life, Mosaic and other crafts

≈ 68 Comments

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“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” -― Stephen King

I had complained to my mom that my sister had a towel with little girls on it and I didn’t.  Mom set out to correct that. The result is the cute towel above.

I am very proud of my mom.  She has always been a hard-worker, honest and generous to a fault.  She is the type of person that, given the opportunity, could have been anything she wanted. 

Instead, she had to start working very early, at the age of 7.  Yes, 7!!  She only went to third grade in school, but is smarter than most graduates that I know. It was a sad childhood.  A poor family, 14 kids, she was the baby.  Her father died when she was 4 years old.  She says that when he died she lost her protector.  She adored him. 

Eventually I will write more about her life.  This post is about her beautiful macramé towels. 

Mom will be 87 years old in a couple of months.  She has been always very active, working and doing her crafts.  She hasn’t done much lately because of her issues with her hip.  She has been in a lot pain, so she spends a lot time resting now. 

She has always done knitting and crocheting. At the age of 70 she took a few classes and started oil painting.  My walls are covered with her paintings. I am not sure if I have posted them here before, but I will make sure to post them.

Then, she taught herself how to do macramé by reading some craft magazines.   Macramé is a craft that is done by knotting yarn, and other similar material.   It was a dying art that has become popular again.  It requires patience, precision and persistence.

It has taken her weeks to remind herself how to do the macramé knots for little girls, but she did it!  I admire her constant wanting to learn, relearning and challenging herself. Be it a new recipe, a new macramé knot, or a new painting.  

Below are some of the towels that she has made in the past for my sister and I.  She has made dozens more as gifts to friends.  She also has taught a few people how to do it.  Not everyone that she tried to teach was able to learn, but a couple are doing it well.

My mom’s life now is very different from her childhood.  My parents are spoiled by my siblings and I.  We try to make them happy, inasmuch as we can do that.

“Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.” ― Aristotle

“The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it. ”  ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” ― Émile Zola

“According to this law [the law of Dharma], you have a unique talent and a unique way of expressing it. There is something that you can do better than anyone else in the whole world–and for every unique talent and unique expression of that talent, there are also unique needs. When these needs are matched with the creative expression of your talent, that is the spark that creates affluence. Expressing your talents to fulfill needs creates unlimited wealth and abundance.” ― Deepak Chopra

 

 

 

 

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An update on my dating life, or lack thereof

20 Friday May 2016

Posted by in Daily Life

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“A good place to meet a man is at the dry cleaner. These men usually have jobs and bathe.” – Rita Rudner

  1. The Doctor continues to text every now and then and it seems that we have settled on friendship.  I am happy with that.  He is not boyfriend material as he doesn’t seem to know what he wants, but he can be a great friend. File under “No romance, but great conversations”
  2. The perfect guy that was emailing me has not reached out since I didn’t reply to his last email.  Were he real he would wonder what happened and probably write inquiring.  File this under “I dodged a bullet!”
  3. The much younger guy totally disappeared.  I am considering filing a Missing Person’s Report. :-). File under “It was going to be a mistake anyway”
  4. I met someone (still from the Craigslist ad).  We had a great time at dinner.  He asked me on a second date that same evening and I said yes and said I would let him know when.  I am having second thoughts now.  He is recently divorced with 5 kids, and I have to say that 5 kids scare me. Also not a whole lot of chemistry, so I am not sure if I will go through with the second date.  File under “Perhaps… the jury is still out”
  5. There was another guy emailing me, and even though he seemed nice he kept pushing me to meet him.  I explained that my mom is in town and I am having some other stuff to take care of and asked for his patience.  Still he continue to push me. I hate to be pressured on doing something, and I told him so.  I think that it is the end of that. File under: “Patience is a virtue”
  6. My great blogger friend Vanessa from the Vanessence blog thought she had the perfect guy to introduce to me.  Unfortunately when she reached out to him she found out he just got a girlfriend.  I am not disappointed at all as it was a real long shot, but I am extremely happy that someone would think I am a great person to introduce to friends. File under: “It is good to be thought of”
  7.  And now for the last update.  On my post of May 11 I talked about a man from my past that I dated in 2007.  He has never given up and always texted me every now and then, even thought I always ignored him.  Right after Mother’s Day I gave in and replied to one of his texts. We started exchanging flirty texts, or so I thought; only for him to tell me that he has had a girlfriend since 2008.

At which point I said I was not interested, but he is still trying.  Here are the texts he sent the following day (May 12):

Screenshot 1

I didn’t reply, I thought he would get the hint, but then again he doesn’t understand hints, so below are the texts from yesterday, to which I replied:

Screenshot 2

Screenshot 3

Screenshot 4

I cut off the rest of the message as there were personal information and names of people pertaining to the details of this event. I didn’t reply and will not again.

I have to come clean and confess that a tiny part of me would love to attend this Dinner Dance event.  I also would love to see him again after almost ten years.  I am curious.  But not looking for drama.  So this is an invitation that was easy to pass up.

If the past is any indication I will continue to hear from him every now and then.   It is up to me not to reply again.  Even though he has no business contacting anyone if he has a girldfriend I have no ill feelings towards him and I still think he has a good heart.  I feel he is just misguided.  He should invest the time he is wasting texting me into fixing his relationship.

Clearly they are growing apart.  I once too thought it was okay for my boyfriend and I to go to events alone and take vacations apart.  I am talking about the first boyfriend (one day I will write about that relationship – we were together for 20 years!!).  I remember he never wanted to attend my work events.  Even though I had always lied to myself and said it was fine, that he was just not comfortable in that enviroment, it was never fine.  It signaled  problems in the relationship.  We disguised the unwilligness to support each other as freedom and individuality.

Relationships are hard work.  It takes compromise and the willingness to venture into the uncomfortable to support each other.  I want my significant other to be there next to me.  I no longer need to stand alone somewhere to prove that I am my own person.

I would hate for somebody else to spend 20 years with someone that is not their match.  Still, not regrets!  Hidsight is 20/20.  Moving forward.  Looking back to just see how far I have come!

and file all this under: “Keeping the faith!  It is not if, it is just when”

“Sometimes the comfort of being in a relationship lulls you into mundane complacency; you become irrelevant in each other’s lives. We call this phenomenon ‘growing apart’.” – Steve Maraboli

 

Leaning to accept the right to be angry!

23 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Daily Life, Finding Me

≈ 30 Comments

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Diana's Sunflower

Diana’s Sunflower

My goddaughter knows of my love for sunflowers so she made me one out of clay. Last time she made me something out of clay I dropped and it broke, then I lost some of the pieces. I felt bad. So this time I was intent on not breaking it. I painted this craft box of white, and then glued some plastic tiles on and around it. Then I glued the sunflower on top. It is a bit childish, but so am I, so I love it!

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“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” – Aristotle

Lately my Mom has angry moments, angry days.  She is angry at friends, at situations, at the weather. It seems she is angry at the world!

I don’t like it. I want to take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. I want her to realize how blessed she is. I want her to realize that being angry doesn’t help. Anger only poisons everything around. Anger corrodes happiness.

I can never tell her like it is. Everything is sugar-coated, always walking on egg-shells around her. My Mom is pampered. My siblings and I would and do everything for her. We never challenged my mother, we mostly agree. It seems too late to change the dynamic.

I think I know her anger though. My mom is 80 years old. She has amazing energy and looks more like 60 than 80. She can run circles around a 25 year old. But lately there are some days when she feels age creeping in. Since she fell ill a year ago, things have not been the same.

Her anger is from a body giving in when the soul is just waking up. It is from so many dreams and so little time. It is from a world of opportunities a tad too late. It is from a nameless frustration from pains too painful to deal with.  It is from fear of forgetting, is from fear of depending.

“He continued to see inevitable events from the past as avoidable, long after they’d taken their course.”  – Hugh Howey

Combine that with a painful, poor and hard childhood that she still carries around and every now and then mentions it but doesn’t free it.  As she ages and she shrinks, her shrinkage is as much from time as it is from the burden that she stubbornly carries. Such is my mother’s story, unable to pacify the child within.

Now that my 50th birthday is looming I begin to understand her frustration. Time is running out. The reality of the finite is unforgiving. A weakening body that seems to be slowing down too fast is scary.

What can I do when Mom gets angry for no reason? When she makes a mountain out of a molehill? Absolutely nothing! She will not change not matter how much I want her to. Trying to point out the obvious hasn’t worked. So I will try to change instead, in as much as I can.

Now I choose acceptance and respect.  I no longer get angry that she is angry.  I respect her right to be angry when she wants to. Why must she bottle up her anger because of my discomfort?

In my book my mother has earned the right to be angry when she wants to.  I will continue to love and pamper my Mom no matter how angry she gets.  I think love is stronger than anger, so I will always choose love.

In learning to accept my mother’s right to be angry, I am learning to accept everyone’s right to be angry, including my own!  My mom continues to teach me incredible lessons even if she doesn’t realize.

I know that everything passes. Everything has an end.  Thinking of my mother as finite terrifies me and it also helps me to love, accept and respect.

“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” – John Barrymore