Working on The Big Job

I'm happy working, about a fourth of the way through the big job, working hard every day. Doing other things, of course, but mostly that. Worked on Friday, went to Market, got up and worked on Sunday. Worked today. Decided not to go to Tuesday Market because it will be rainy, and because I want to work on the big job tomorrow. I want to work on it on Wednesday, so I'm happy my writing group was cancelled this week. I want the second half to come right away and I will be sorry to finish it, though tired and relieved I'm sure.

Mother's Day came and went, and I sent a card and talked to my Mom on the phone. I thought a lot about mothering, and parenting. My ex- called me to thank me as he often does. I thanked him back. Mothering was the first big job that really felt good to me like this one does. The feeling is that nothing is as important, that this is the first and really only priority. Mothering was like that, but not until the helpless baby was really here. Pregnancy was a bit abstract, and my first priority was still work then. For years and years though, mothering was my first and largest thought every day, every hour.

The business I had with my ex- then wa
s the direct connection to this life now, and I do owe him thanks because I would never have chosen it. I would have stayed a little one-person craft business and not ever had employees to manage or accounts to wholesale to, or a giant warehouse unit with machines and shelves and equipment I didn't even really know how to use: that big old-fashioned photo enlarger. That fabric knife that we used to cut out the fish ties was too scary for me. The rafts of sales reps were way too much for me. I endured the big business because it was what we were doing, and because it allowed me to buy this house, another thing I wouldn't have done. I followed Mike's lead, and was happy to take on the challenges once I realized I could succeed at them. It was the perfect thing to be doing in my late thirties. I kept it when it got small and I am still living it, and doing a lot with the skills that connect me with my community. It has been keeping me alive for decades now. We started it in 1985, so thirty years.

In 1989 I decided to have a baby, and had my son when I was 39. I had a new role, and I still had the old roles, but this one was different. I immediately set out to prepare myself for a new level of relationship. None of my boyfriends or partners had expected that much of me, that I would keep them alive and figure out how to allow them to thrive. I knew how to make a home, but not how to be the person who was at the center of it. So I put my son at the center and worked around him while I learned how to grow up. I did okay at it, though I would change a great many things if I could. Still, I honor myself for the immersion and for the seriousness with which I took on the challenge. I loved the primacy of it, the fact that nothing was more important. That's probably what was the hardest thing about the empty nest phase, the way I had to let go of that primary role, that honorable and deeply engaging role, and find another that would fill me at least half as much.

I found other things and people to nurture. It's not the same, as these are organizations and adults and philosophies and theories that I nurture now, and I spend much more time on my own self-indulgent pursuits like my writing and reading and film studies and birding and plant interests. I'm at the center if anything is. I'm at the center making any kind of choice I want to make, whether it be the silliness of the Jell-O Art Show or the seriousness of diligent historical research. I think about important things like whether or not to cut down the apple tree or the holly tree, when to fix the roof, what to do about all the many things that need my attention. I do a lot for free and a lot for small amounts of money that add up, and I work most of the time on my own terms. I'm happy to have such a varied life with what seems like the right amount of responsibility and I don't want to make any big changes, though I am making small ones as I age. Letting go of things is getting easier, and changing is less under my control and more up to the fourth dimension of time.

When I get into something like this big job, it reminds me of those days of mothering, when I had one clear and always present priority. I had to meet the needs of my son. And now I have to deliver this great quantity of printed shirts. Each one is going to be used and treasured by an individual who is involved in another big thing, an event that is much more than an event, a time that is wide and deep for many, many people. While I am cranking them out at a rapid rate, 597 the first day, and 637 the second day, each one is going to the hands of someone I know or will see or will miss during the event, or for years afterward. Each one is a symbol of the thing we are going to do together. This is the year of the fifth element, now that we've gone through the ceremonies of Earth, Air, Water and Fire.

The fifth element, which I think is Spirit, is something we can't even really talk about. I start to cry when I try to address it. I know some of the dimensions of it, some of the language, some of the mysteries. I know there are no answers to the questions that we ask of spirit. There is no end to the labels and interpretations and limits we humans try to place on it. Our pettiness does not bother spirit. Our individuality, our self-importance, our righteousness, does not impress. I don't matter, except that I am everything as well. I hold spirit in my hands and I am using my hands to convey spirit to many others, in the objects I am making.

They are practical and meaningful, and yet common and rather ordinary in many ways. They're all alike even though handmade artifacts touched by me. Others will touch them and not think of me. I am a vehicle sending them on their way to be meaningful. I'm letting them all go. Some will return for an additional layer of meaning, when I print things on the back to honor pieces of the work we are all going to do. When I handle them again they will resonate for me, but not as something I own, but something I am giving.

I like that I am doing this by myself. I'm not, really, as I am paying someone to help me and will be inviting others to volunteer to do so, but I'm the main effort being applied and everything is depending on me. If I failed or flaked someone else would step up, but that is not going to happen because this big job is my reason for life right now. My immediate life, right now. This night, this heart is beating to do this thing. I can't think of anything that has felt so important since my son was small. I'm fully immersed. I feel quite beautiful and powerful and full.

The wedding and all the people and the life and death was all framed by the word love. Everyone was saying it so much I felt cynical. I felt that it was so simplistic to talk about this bit of love, the relationship between a man and a woman, one thin slice of the world's love. The poem I almost had to read was kind of saying that if you didn't have that, nothing else mattered. I just knew that wasn't true. I wanted to explain somehow that all the love that was there, the many ways people were sharing it and declaring it and owning it and giving it, all that love was still not all the kinds of love.

This kind of love, my love of my work and the depth of it, even though it looks like a job of screenprinting when some ink gets applied to some fabric, encompasses a lifetime of meaning. It's the main kind of love I have right now, and I feel very lucky to have it and to recognize it. I don't have to get up early and go to work tomorrow. I get to get up early and put my heart into it, use my hands to enrich my life and the life of thousands. I can hardly wait. I just had to stay up late and remark upon it. It's work worth doing.