Every year, I make my two sons something homemade. Like, from scratch.
Now, ordinarily, this is nothing to boast about. I know that. But you’ve never seen my work.
In homemaking class way back in Grade 7, I fought the sewing machine and the machine won. Since then, I’m nearly phobic of any motorized needle, with the exception of a tattoo gun. My mark in that class wasn’t an A. It wasn’t a C. It was, ‘Single and childless.’
My late grandma tried to teach me to knit. I remember the knitting part vaguely, but the eye injury well.
The first Christmas I attempted my homemade craft skills out, I fashioned a tie for my son. It was silver, and in green thread, I stitched down its centre, ‘Christmas 2001.’ That Christmas, I was a newly-single mom and I had little left over for toys and clothes. I had a close friend named Bob, he was a single dad to a little boy named Aniken, after the Star Wars character. I dragged poor Bob to my mom’s Christmas supper and little did he know, I had made him a matching tie.
These ties, they were crooked, hand-stitched and crude, but Bob proudly wore his tie all night long. I lost Bob a couple of years later to cancer, but every year, I remember wistfully the tie torment he tolerated for a friend.
Another year, I tried to sew a stuffed great white shark. My oldest son, like his mom, loves the power of predators and raw, unbridled nature. And this year, I wanted to go big. Again, I was a little low on cash, and used an old cotton stretch shirt for the material. The stretchy part was the problem. I stuffed and stuffed that shark, but no matter how hard I tried, it looked like an impotent camel. I tore open another pillow and tried to rectify the problem to no avail. Still, I then spent hours stitching his name and the year into the side of the disasterous shark.
But he loved it. And every year, he takes that tie out of the Christmas decorations and hangs it on the tree with loving care. He’s sentimental, also like his mom and to him, family traditions are sacred. The youngest, he prefers toys, but I know that one day, he’ll appreciate these homemade efforts, as comical as they inevitably turn out.
I learned a few years ago that in addition to having attention deficit disorder, I also have two rather pronounced learning disabilities. One is mathematics, the other is spatial relations.
I had no idea what spatial relations were when I first heard the term. Initial thoughts sprang to some sort of intergalactic breeding program. But once I knew, everything started to make sense.
Basically, I can’t figure out how stuff goes together. Like a Kinder Egg, the bane of my Easter existence. Or how to load paper into the printer in the right direction. Or how to draw a straight line. Or how to look at those mind challenges, where you have to move shapes around to form a perfect triangle. There are countless examples, but this learning disability has made me a devout duct tape consumer and a lousy craft-maker.
Last year, I tried to make giant, round pillows, designed to be a fluffy replica of last year’s toy fad, those little collectible Bakugan balls. After 20 hours of straight hand stitching, they were square.
Which brings us to this year. And I haven’t started anything yet for the kids yet. It’s been crazy busy with this newspaper, and it hasn’t left a lot of time for things like housework, cooking or sleeping. On Boxing Day, we’re heading to Winnipeg to visit our kin, which is why this is the last Badger of 2009. Which gives me the 23rd and the 24th to bake, clean, sleep and sew. And wrap and fold the mountain of clean laundry in the hallway.
Read Survival Mama’s column on page 10. And then join me in forming a club called, ‘I want to punch Survival Mama in the face.’ Kapow!
She makes soup. She sews. She knits. She cans and plants and mends and dries meat for beef jerky. And she works. And mothers.
So tight is my timeline this year, I am considering purchasing a sewing machine. And yet, somehow, after nine winters of hand sewing my Christmas creations, I wouldn’t feel right about it.
And it seems whatever I make should somehow have a badger theme. A little stuffed badger, perhaps. Maybe just a paw. Or a blanket that looks like a newspaper. How hard can it be? I could be fortunate enough to run two of them over and skin them for their hide. But that didn’t work out so well with the coyotes I collected after a derby one time. (FYI, never throw three dead coyotes in the front seat of your car. Also, get to skinning ‘em before the next chinook hits.)
I may be spatial relations challenged, but I have learned one critical lesson over the years – where there’s a will, there’s a way. I just wish it didn’t always have to be the hard one.
Merry Christmas!