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Irma Amelia and George Edmund sharing space with Jasmine
and the rest of the bunnies. Puddy the goat is off eating the picnic table |
I enjoyed my 20's more than my teens--but who doesn't? I became an adult in my 30's--finishing school, getting a job, and taking a husband. My 40's started well with a child, but turned rough within a couple of years when I looked back on life to date--thinking it was half over--and was dismayed at what I hadn't done, hadn't accomplished. Now I am settling into my 50's, and life seems to have split wide open and gushes with new things to learn and do.
I am, for the first time, building conscious mental models of processes and knowledge in subjects ranging from mathematics to sheep shearing. I want to study and do everything--glass; ceramics; silver-smithing; black-smithing; spinning; weaving; crochet; wood carving and turning; knitting; soap-making; quilting; candle-making; bee-keeping; food science; goat, llama and sheep husbandry (before I do too much husband-scaring I need to note that a more precise way of phrasing that last desire is to say I want to participate in their care at the East Lake Community Learning Garden and Urban Farm--ELCLGUF--culminating in harvesting their fleece and hair for processing and spinning into yarn); and the list just goes on. I want to take up archery, develop a yoga practice, lose weight, and explore physics and mathematics--I'm sure there is more (Kumihimo, bead-weaving, Tai-Chi, meditation, Japanese, Italian, Thai--language and cooking, mosaics, and dyeing jump to mind), but you get the point. What I am finding in 50 is that things I was blocked on before--things I couldn't seem to learn or do no matter how I tried--I can suddenly do and understand.
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| Blocks of batik shirt scraps from recent quilting workshop |
In high school when math starting including Greek letters, it became, well, Greek to me. In fact I would have had an easier time learning Greek. Physics, with its formulae, was just as obscure. But as I totter into my 50's some veil has lifted, and I am finally beginning to see the models and concepts necessary for understanding and processing these disciplines--and they fascinate me.
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| One of my first thrown pieces on the wheel |
In my 30's I tried to learn wheel-throwing pottery and spinning fleece into yarn, but they were handcrafts that I just couldn't get a handle on so I let them go. But I picked up wheel-throwing again at the beginning of this year in a class at Spruill Center for the Arts, and it came naturally and easily. I could do it.
With high hopes, I brought the fleeces from shearing George Edmund and Irma Amelia last Saturday at ELCLGUF to Montana, and this week I'll finish washing and start carding them. then next Sunday I am taking a spinning at
Joseph's Coat in Missoula. When I succeed this time, I'll rent a spinning wheel from them for the rest of the summer.
It used to feel like there weren't enough hours in the day to get done everything I had to do. Now it feels much more like there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do--and I haven't even mentioned playing Minecraft, reading, creating websites, playing Euro board games (better than Monopoly), and sharing everything with Jessie.
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| Assisting in the shearing of Irma Amelia on my 52nd birthday |
Time passes so quickly now! When I was Jessie's age I seemed to notice every minute in a day, a week was interminable, and a month lasted forever. Anything further out than that was beyond y ability to measure. Maybe it's that very perception of time that kept me from going through this intense-desire-to-learn stage earlier. It's not that I didn't have the opportunity--I remember leaning to sew, knit, and crochet when I was little older than Jessie. But I was always an instant-gratification kind of girl, and what I remember from those times is how long it took to get something from what you were doing--the boring parts seemed to last forever.
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| Shard samples for metal oxides from broken thrown piece |
But now, with days and weeks passing in blur, the amount of time it takes to get to the end of an endeavor--to see something from my effort--is so much shorter. I think the difference in perception of time between age 12 and age 52 is going to provide the biggest challenge in homeschooling Jessie this fall. I will have to remember not to get frustrated or disappointed when she doesn't share my wonder and joy in learning about everything and doing anything that takes our fancy. I have to remember that the boring parts--the long, trudging work parts--are going to seem really long to her making the projects not nearly as fun.
So I sit--bundled in fuzzy socks, cosy pants, a t-shirt and a sweatshirt--in Montana and I ponder the summer and life spread before me, and I wonder again:
Is it time to change the title of this blog to the title of this post?
I am, for the first time, building conscious mental models of processes and knowledge in subjects ranging from mathematics to sheep shearing. I want to study and do everything--glass; ceramics; silver-smithing; black-smithing; spinning; weaving; crochet; wood carving and turning; knitting; soap-making; quilting; candle-making; bee-keeping; food science; goat, llama and sheep husbandry (before I do too much husband-scaring I need to note that a more precise way of phrasing that last desire is to say I want to participate in their care at the East Lake Community Learning Garden and Urban Farm--ELCLGUF--culminating in harvesting their fleece and hair for processing and spinning into yarn); and the list just goes on. I want to take up archery, develop a yoga practice, lose weight, and explore physics and mathematics--I'm sure there is more (Kumihimo, bead-weaving, Tai-Chi, meditation, Japanese, Italian, Thai--language and cooking, mosaics, and dyeing jump to mind), but you get the point. What I am finding in 50 is that things I was blocked on before--things I couldn't seem to learn or do no matter how I tried--I can suddenly do and understand.
