I’m a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That’s what kind of man I am. You’re just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It’s science.
“He’s like the fucking Terminator!” my husband takes me aside and whispers to me as we put away clothes in the kids’ room.
Ralph is talking about our son, who recently acquired a craft book from our library and is single-mindedly going through it and making everything he can (or as Ralph describes him, is “a shark riding on an elephant’s back, just trampling and eating everything he sees”); I may have mentioned the other day as I struggled with euthanizing my beloved life-companion kitty, Nels was preoccupied mostly with building a clock using supplies from the vet’s). The point: Little Guy is focused. In the last week or so – and with little assistance – our son has plowed through a magnetic fishing game (with the most beautiful hand-painted fish), a wooden pyramid stacking puzzle (two actually – one for our house and one for our friends’ upcoming twins), a pillow with removable flower applique motif (he kept me up all hours helping him with this poly felt monstrosity, ugh!), a velcro tic-tac-toe game, numerical wooden math blocks with a wooden box to house them, and some paper fastener puppets. Oh, and the clock. THE CLOCK. I want to punch the clock in the face because it was the Biggest Deal Ever for a day and a half.
My son’s intent reminds me of last summer’s music instrument obsession: the lesson I learned there was really two-fold: A. my son is awesome and incredibly self-directed, and B. he doesn’t want to own things, he wants to make them.
Now, I am – like many good Americans – a shopper. I love to buy things! It gives me this happy feeling and instant gratification! So a few months ago when Nels made a cigar-box guitar I went and looked up cigar box guitars because my first instinct was to buy buy buy my son one because he’d love it so much (oops! in this case; they can be a bit more dear than I’d realized). Nels had to patiently tell me: I don’t need you to buy it, I already made it, and now I want to make a violin, and I need your quilting ruler.
And it’s funny, because I do like to buy, even if most of my buying power revolves around groceries. Despite the impracticality of such fantasy purchases I surf Etsy like a porn addict; I fantasize about our bi-monthly trips to Olympia where I squirrel away fabric when our spending plan permits. So in some way it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around this child who wants to make the thing – to think of it, to picture it in his mind and forge it with his own mettle and ingenuity – especially when the thing he makes isn’t going to be as high quality as the “real” thing (he is convinced he is creating the “real” thing – and really it occurs to me: he is).
But upon further inspection, actually, what Nels gets up to these days makes a whole heck of a lot of sense, especially this last handful of hours or so as I’ve been realizing: we’re a family of Makers.
Of course – I sew. I sew daily, when I can and when life does not conspire against me. And I sew when it’s “cheaper” to furnish clothing thusly (sometimes it is) and when it’s more expensive (often, sort of, and I mean to write more about this soon), and I sew almost compulsively because I love the process. I get joy from picturing what something could be, and then making it happen. I fucking love this! Because I can do it! And so many people can’t! Or won’t!
In the vein of Making – I write (lots!), even when I’m not officially writing (rare). Over my life (since I picked up a pencil, really) I have been told, suggested to, advised, and repeatedly harassed to monetize my writing (right). My writing is my record, it is my body of work. It matters to me if it doesn’t matter to anyone else, EVAR (although I am often assured it does). My writing matters to me because I make it, not because it gets translated into currency, not because other people deem it Good (it isn’t really, or rather, lots of people do a lot better). I won’t stop writing as long as I’m able.
And of course, I make food. I mean I don’t just open cans and mix it or heat it up, I really, really make it (we grow food too, now that I think of it – a kind of Make in itself). I make food not because it’s cheaper (it often is) or “healthier” (it often is) but because it feels like Love to cook. It feels like I am creating Love and putting it to my family and friends. Now, lots of people can’t make food, or for whatever reason prefer to buy – pre-made grocery stuff, or restaurant fare, depending on their socio-economic status and proclivities. Fine with me: “Making” takes a lot of time. In fact, some days I feel like all I do is make, clean, make, clean, make, clean, fall down on the couch and get tight watching B-movies. Because apparently I can’t stop making, even if in my mind I think of myself as being a kind of aimless person, prone to laziness and rather unoriginal (all of which may be true).
But I do love to make things – so much, and maybe that’s why I gravitate to fellow Makers. Because what’s funny is, when I think about liking to Buy I discover upon further inspection the things I want to purchase are OOAK, as they say – not crafted by machine or slave-labor empire churning out products of sameness but rather individual awesomeness built by people – Makers!
My partner is a Maker, too. Besides the fact he can build computers and chicken coops (I call it the Chicken Shanty! He literally hates me for this!) and shelves and cold frames and websites and draw just about anything and is a heck of a graphic artist (which he does, gratis, and in tiny little breaks of his very busy life), he makes music. No really, he makes it! He doesn’t play other people’s! He thinks of it then it comes out of his face and guitar! Does anyone else find this amazing enough to warrant all these exclamation marks! Because I do!!!
And on that note, let me add that the Hogabooms have been a bit uncomfy of late, and in thinking this whole business over I’m seeing why. We do not have a craft space set up for the kids (and the grown-ups), and my sewing room has a positive dearth of shelves so stuff is stacked and falling over, and even though FAWM officially starts today, we have not figured out where/how Ralph will be recording. Last night we purchased – with money not yet in hand, but yet to be earned – a few bits to make shelves for our son and his craft supplies, because they are taking over our (ill-furnished) little house and it’s making me crazy. And I’m thinking that Ralph and I have to move over a bit, because our kids are wanting to build, create, express themselves in the same ways they’ve grown up around.
Oh, and: THE CLOCK. Jeebus, the clock. Nels did a live upload to YouTube, which is why the audio and video are out of sync. But I’m sure you can see the awesomeness nevertheless:
Of course he likes to MAKE THINGS! Because he’s an incredible child! And he’s a child after his mother and father’s own heart.
yeah, as soon as you were talking about Nels making stuff, I thought of you. That is how I think of you. You make stuff, real and imagined, and that may be the entire thing that I am drawn to in others – they make things. Real things from real things, real things from the world in their heads, make imaginary things out of real things, or imaginary things out of imaginary things, preferably all of these.
I had been thinking that I like people who can talk about ideas, which is true, but it didn’t quite hit the nail on the head. I like people who can talk about ideas, are not mentally stagnant, people who make things and especially people who can do a variety of things and enjoy them, whether or not they are amazingly good at them, but I enjoy it when people are really good at something that they love to do. I appreciate hard work, I am so glad that other people work hard too, and usually what I mean by that is not the job kind of work, but the work of love, truth and beauty (whatever that means to me or them or whoever at any given time, including “jobs” when it can).
I always feel like this weird underachiever until I start to think about the things I do in a day or a week or a month or a year. Churning out knit things, writing (though no one really sees it right now), photography, cooking, growing plants to eat, raising chickens, parenting (and friending and wifing), a little painting, learning (right now in a concentrated way on the topics of nature in general where I live specifically, and edible and medicinal plants as a related but somewhat different area), and running and biking, and so on and it’s really all pretty great, fun, amazing, exciting, and I thank god that I am not bored ever. But I miss people who can talk about ideas, and making stuff, on a day to day basis.
It’s easy to feel like an underachiever when you don’t get paid for your work with money. Or at least, there’s a lot of messages out there that what you do doesn’t count unless you earn cash. Ridiculous, but there it is.
Sometimes I feel like I get NOTHING done… but I have to give myself a break on days like that: and remember, too, that back when I had paid employment I had days where I was pretty low-efficiency or made mistakes or whatever.
it is weird to work and not earn money. I get paid for some photos here and there, but not in any real way. There are different parts to supporting a family, and i do the non money ones ok mostly.
Oddly, I worked for money today for the first time in who knows how long – subbing at my son’s preschool (six kids for 3 hours with the main teacher present – they pay better than subbing a class of 30 kids at the elementary school), and got “hired” as the substitute teacher (when one of the other 3 can’t be there for some reason and I can be). So that was weird! But I sure didn’t get anything done. Ha!