OT/OOC

I have a convenient memory of squeezed box compartments.

Someone asked me this weekend when did I learn to hand sew? Who had taught me? And I breathed for a moment trying remember. I remember watching Meme sew, my father's mom, on the short stay with her after Grandpa Burt died. She made me a Holly Hobby doll from a kit, and she swore over the thing furiously. It was the first time one of my elders swore around me. I felt bad for making her work on something that I really couldn't play with- it was more of a model on a styrafoam base. She made me a yarn doll too, and showed me how to make it myself. I remember watching Gram sew- and I still treasure the few cloth dolls from her hands that I got to keep, and her patterns so I could make more. I remember Mom telling me how her father taught her how to dangle the needle so it would untangle. I remember being shown several times fancy embroidery stitches and their names. I quickly forgot the names. But I don't remember learning to sew, or the first thing I must have taken large crooked stitches on. I just... knew.

Jazz commented on being happy to get compliments on his wooden staves he is carving. Someone asked him how. I was baffled. How can you not know how? And I tried to remember who taught me to hold a knife? Who showed me safety circles and the knife etiquette? When did I start making buttons from sticks? I remember the rabbit I carved. I remember the frogs and the butterflies I carved from soap. I still have my knife. But who gave it to me? I can't remember.

And today, I am listening to young women from Ohio, and I am remembering how my accent changed every time I moved. How hard I worked to drop the "you know" from my every sentence, and the "like" as well. I remember they teased me for talking funny every time I have moved. But that's to be expected, when you move from Wyoming, to Florida, to Ohio, and upstate NY. I don't think my parents ever changed. Immutable. It's only when I look back can I see their changes.

I feel the same, mentally, as I did when I was 13. But I've changed too. And I wonder how much else I have forgotten, and what else do I know. I can make, or at least know how to make, almost anything. When did I learn it? How do I know?  ¶ 6:34 PM