Well, yesterday was one of those "challenging" days - I was running all day long, from 8 until 3 (and then again from 6 to 8 for youth group).

In between that time, I
1. Got an email telling me that a friend of the family (my parents' pastor, in fact), was in a major serious car accident. (Later on, I found out things were not as bad as the original message, but he's still in for surgery and several months of unpleasant rehab).

2. Had to go to Wal-Mart. At 4 pm. I needed a couple items for Youth Group. As is my luck at wal-mart, I wound up in the "20 Items or Less" lane (which I should really stop letting myself be fooled by) and wound up behind someone who
a. had more than 20 items.
b. had some kind of complex transaction - I don't know if they had food stamps or the state welfare program or WIC or what, but it took two cashiers about seven minutes to figure it out.
c. did not speak much English.

I would have hopped to another line but by then all the rest had people with carts loaded as if the Apocalypse was coming (It's Wednesday? Who does their "big shopping" on a Wednesday?) and I figured the wait would be even longer.

By the time I got out of there I was frazzled and sad and I'm not being helped by

3. It's the run-up to Valentine's Day. Reminding me, that once again, I do not have a "Valentine." I do not know how long it has been since I had a "Valentine" on Valentine's Day.

Driving home, I got to thinking about how easy it was when I was a kid - before we really understood the facts of life and the reasons for coupling and letting all that crap get in the way.

You made a shoebox decorated with red paper and either doilies or cut-out paper hearts or tissue paper flowers or something (The boys, I remember, would put racecars or things like that on theirs). You put it on your desk on Valentine's Day.

And you got cards. And even in the years when I didn't have new-agey hippie teachers who were all concerned about our self-esteem and required us to give cards to EVERYONE in the class if we gave cards, I still got cards. And I'd usually get a few from boys. Sometimes even boys I liked.

And even if I didn't, my friends would give me cards wishing a happy valentine's day.

And like so many holidays, adulthood ruins Valentine's Day. The expectations change. No longer is it ok to give someone a card with Spiderman or Bugs Bunny on it either asking them to be your valentine or wishing them a happy valentine's day. I mean, unless you're somehow coupled to the person or are hoping to be.

And the ads...the ads I've been seeing (pajamagram is by far the worst) make me want to spin my head around and vomit pea soup. When did it become ok to imply in an ad that if you buy a woman something, she'll sleep with you? That's just icky.

I don't know if this new cynical attitude (as opposed to my old, "I'm totally forsaken and no one loves me in the societally-important form of "love"" attitude) is an improvement or not. But anything to get a single person through the holiday that has come to quietly imply "If you're not getting a gift from a honey, there's something very badly wrong with you."


So anyway. I went home after the whole wal-mart fiasco. I prepared the thing I needed to prepare for youth group and I found I had a whole 45 minutes to myself. Whoo.

(This is one of the reasons why I will never be a mother: 45 minutes to myself in a day is NOT ENOUGH. And it seems that when you're a mother, some days you get 0 minutes to yourself).

So I cut tumblers for my new quilt. It's actually kind of soothing, cutting pieces of fabric, somehow it's better at detracking my mind from all the things that were upsetting me. I wrote a fragment of a poem in my head while working. Like a lot of the poems I come up with, I have no idea if it's any good or not:

I prepare the fabric
examining it for wrinkles
taking the imperfect pieces to the iron
smoothing them, warming them.
And then, inexplicably, laying my hands on them, as if in blessing, before carrying them back to the table.

I bend to my work: concentrating, taking car not to mar the fabric beyond where the necessary cuts are made, turning the template to be frugal.

I am composing the quilt - a repeated notes of brown and gold, accidentals of pale pink and lime. I wonder how this compares to Dvorak, to Vaughn Williams, staring at the lined page, calling forth chamber music from their minds.

The stacks of patches grow.

I plan what will go with what. I daydream the finished quilt: complete, beautiful, warm.

The fabric under my hands breathes names to me - Kaffe, Denyse, Amy - these are my stars, my celebrities, the ones I would emulate if I could, far more than any of the names the television lionizes.

I think of others who have gone before me, the great and the humble, the monk illuminating a manuscript in his cell, the noblewoman at her fancywork, the farmer's wife trying to keep the family warm.

I relax back into a better larger world, a world that lasts longer than my annoyances, where irritations evaporate before the eternal cloud of witnesses, the ones who plied their craft in obscurity.

The thought comes to me that every act of creating beauty, recognized by the world or not, adds to the balance of beauty in the universe.

I straighten up and put down my scissors; I am ready to face the world again.