Working Hands.

My parents taught us hands were made for working.  And when we worked, we worked together.  Sometimes we made beautiful things; sometimes we worked on things that just needed to be done.  But whatever it was, I never saw my mother or father hire a plumber or contractor, painter or landscaper.  We did everything with our own hands.  We painted walls, held ladders so my father could scale too-high places, pushed wheelbarrows, learned to grout and lay tile.  Our small hands worked alongside theirs.  When I think of all the important things my parents have taught my siblings and me over the years, this is the one I always come back to:  hands are made for working.  The older Jane and Henry grow, the more I love watching them develop a relationship with their hands.  Holding, building, digging, gripping, never too young to realize the strength, flexibility, and thoughtfulness embedded in each small finger, direct extensions of their soul. 

Surfacing

It was a week where the smell of tomato sauce brought me to age five, blue TV burbling, small elbows on plastic placemats - my grandmother’s kitchen table.  A week where I stumbled upon the pajamas I wore Christmas Eve twenty years ago, only to sleep in my childhood bed, chestnut-headed daughter flush to my side.  It was a week of neck-high swimming in joy and exhaustion, memories and moments zagging my heart with deep reaching stitches.  Sometimes with things I’d prefer to forget.  Others to play on repeat.  Like our old dog, dappled in light beneath the tree.  My mother’s hands carefully peeling grapefruit, small children in her lap, cancer no longer banging upon her door.  I wonder what our children will remember and want to retrace over and over again 30 years down the road.  Will it be hand-over-hand cutting of butternut squash?  Tiny red wooden beads slung on the tree?  Nodding off to the rhythm of streetlights cutting the night?  How desperately I want to know.

I'LL do it.

Jammed the last two weeks with endless loops of designing and editing, keeping very odd hours, while juggling children like clementines.  A little extra TV, take-out, and mini cars zooming at my feet while I worked squeezed minutes out of the day.  Things I promised myself I wouldn’t do seemed to keep the schedule going.  And somehow, everyone is just fine.  Perhaps except for the night I made tomato soup with eggnog instead of cream.  But the frenzy has slowed, and the kids seem unfazed.  I’m awaiting orders to trickle in from the press and getting into a rhythm of going to bed before 2 am.  Strangely I miss the hot buzz, my brain feeding on that blue-creative-fire, but it’s been nice to get back to the very important business of wiping tears, laundering sheets, photographing the kids just mucking around, and figuring out how to get the two-year-old dressed in a timely fashion.  I think it may be fair to say the Christmas orders will be boxed and pretty before we sort this last one out.

Made by hands

My favorite gifts over the past few years have sat under the tree in crumpled paper bags.  Adorned with glitter and smudged paint, they are bound with unfurling yarn, and thick, pepperminty white glue.  Preciousness related not to what's inside the bag, rather than the hands that carefully made it.

This is our holiday card from last year.  It's made by hand, layered with luxe, creamy stock, archival glue, the velvet ink of Little Rhody Press.  Slipped into a sexy little velum sleeve it's like wrapping a tiny piece of art to send to your loved ones thru the mail.  This time of year our mailboxes are overrun by the artwork of a few large companies that have a grip on the market.  Consider scouting out and supporting an artist you love this holiday season.  There are people right around every corner making beautiful things to share.

I will be sure to post the custom cards from this season, as well as the faces I get to capture.  I cannot express how very thankful I am to those of you who have booked, read, ordered, recommended, supported.  You have kept my hands busy and my heart full of gratitude.