Work, Welding, and Motherhood

[catelin]

I've worked since I was fifteen. I can't imagine not having to work. I've never had a choice about what I wanted to do before. First, I worked and then anything else I wanted to do came afterward. In the beginning what I wanted to do simply came "after five." This later became "after I get the kids to bed" which meant that the anything else (writing, painting, sculpting, etc.) did not begin until around 10 p.m. or so. Over the years, I've fit my creativity into whatever small nooks and crannies of time it could find within my busy schedule. Now I'm looking toward October and having time...not just a little time, but months of the stuff. It's finally sinking in that I'm going to have this gift of time to focus on my art and writing. It's finally sinking in that I'm going to have room for my own studio, for this place that will fit anything I can imagine, media unconstrained by considerations of space, the big or small left completely to my imagination rather than dictated by the square footage of a room. This is why I now spend a lot of time thinking about plasma cutters. Perhaps it is an odd coincidence, but I find that as my children get older I am more and more attracted to the tactile arts. Could it be that these mother's hands are feeling idle without little hands to fill them? My boys are rapidly approaching the age where they won't want to hold hands with me anymore. I don't begrudge them that; it's all part of growing up. It will be hard not to miss it; I can imagine them drifting away from me into their own adolescent lives and it makes me proud and sad all at once. They are so little. Do children always seem little to us? Even when they are grown? I will have to ask my mother how she sees me now, whether she sees me grown or still sees shadows of the little girl I was. I wonder if she misses who I was when I was so small and loved her so much that she was the most perfect thing in the entire universe to me. My youngest started kindergarten today and when he waved goodbye as I left him in his new class, I could see myself waving goodbye to him over and over again in the years ahead. It made me want to cry, as I suppose most mothers want to do when they can no longer delude themselves into thinking that their children belong to them. He is his own person, as is his brother. I knew that from the minute I laid eyes on each of them. I will spend my lifetime reminding myself of it, alternating between feeling blessed and cursed by my overwhelming attachment to and love for them. Some days it seems so profoundly cruel that the lesson we must learn with those we love the most is how to let them go over time. Love's got so many sharp edges to it throughout a single lifetime. I don't know why. All I know is that when my hands are busy, even the things that don't make sense seem to soften and smooth a bit in my own mind.