Spinning Flowers

...questions at my wheel.

Does the yarn I spin hold all the prayers for my mother?

Do the strands of fibery light enfold the grieving love leaking out my fingertips?

Does the wheel gently invite the swirling chaos of memories?

Is there a connection between the yarn on the bobbin and the overflow of my heart?

Are Ashford, Louet and Bosworth actually the names of expert counselors, gentle witnesses to all that aches inside?

Do our spindles and wheels twirl with all our joys and encircle all our woes?

When I cannot draw, knit or weave, I am grateful for the companionship of spinning…no judgment, no shame, no need to explain nor be anywhere else but here, at the wheel, with fiber in hand.

I once knew a knitter who sat by her sister’s hospital bed as she struggled to live. The knitter knit sock after sock receiving comfort from every stitch. But then, after her sister died, she could not bear to knit socks anymore.

I do not want to not be able to spin once my mom has gone home. It could be next week. It could be a month from now, maybe more. No one can tell.

So I shall continue spinning, single after single, plying and winding hanks, piling them up in a bundle.

Then I’ll place them in a vase, like flowers that do not wither and die.

Perhaps I’ll place them on her grave…a bouquet of color containing all my love.

***********

Dear Reader, friend and fellow maker…

I do not wish to cast sadness out into the world as I write through the experience of my mom’s end stages of Alzheimer’s. I write firstly because it is flowing out of me, words encased in every tear drop. I am grateful to be able to write at this time which is both terribly difficult yet strangely sacred and precious… almost I might say charged with an electricity that both enlivens and drains me. My dear mother had her writing words stripped from her 33 years ago at the horrific and sudden deaths of her parents and she could not write for many years, but was given painting as a way to move forward. Have no fear on my behalf. I am upheld and encased by that fibery Light, strand after strand of gossamer gold, a knowing that all will be well, and all is well. I am upheld by something far greater and larger than I, in whose Hands my whole family is held.

The above questions were sitting right on my forehead when I awoke early this morning. I let them unfurl and tried to catch them all as I came downstairs to write in my journal. It wasn’t until after I had written it all out that I looked at my email notifying me of

Beth Kempton

’s next installment for our Winter Writing Sanctuary. Though I have yet to dive into today’s Sanctuary, she says in the email that it “is all about noticing the threads of connection between everything” and I nearly gasped when I read that. Yet I am not surprised, as it is these very threads, most of the time invisible to the naked eye, that I long to be able to see. Sometimes I feel I do see them, and so desire to share them with you.

Most of all, in sharing these aching words, I desire to encourage you in any making or creative endeavor which allows you to move through your days, whether sad or glad. Let the fiber or yarn, words or clay, piano keys or fabrics move through your fingers, gently releasing what is overflowing from your heart. Share it with us if you’d like to in the comments. I appreciate your presence here. 🙏❤️

With gratitude,

Jennifer