MindSpinner

I watched The Lord of the Rings with my son this week. One line still echoes: “I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”

This is just a note to say that I and mine are well and that I miss writing here for the love of words and ideas. Hello to anyone who still stops by sometimes.

I’d like to thank everyone who has read here and sometimes responded. The hours I spent writing were deeply good.

That said, I’m going to close this chapter, I think. I’m doing some adjusting that requires a measure of spiritual and emotional energy. On a practical plane, I’ll add a weekend job after Christmas if I can, for the usual reasons. I won’t have much time to write even if the notion strikes. The blog will remain here until June or so, when I’ll decline to renew the domain name.

There are seasons in every life. This is my season to take care of all that depends on me.

Best wishes for a warm, safe, and happy holiday season spent with the people you love. I have loved meeting you through this medium.

I am cleaning out the closet that houses family albums and boxes of pictures. Well, not exactly. I am looking at pictures from the closet I’m supposed to be cleaning. Thing is, there’s not anybody to tell me that I’m supposed to be cleaning, so maybe there is no “supposed to.” I mean, it’s not as if my mother mentioned in our latest phone conversation how long it has been since I cleaned my closets.

I am looking at pictures, then, and my house is in the mess that houses are in when things are dragged out of the places where we stash them. (I’ve even found that once upon a time, probably in the ’90’s, I bought a computer repair kit from CompUSA with gizmos I don’t even understand - and stashed it in a closet. It looks to me as if I have the means to solder something - who knew?)

In the first picture box I opened, I found the shot in which a two-year-old Catapult Kid meets the Atlantic Ocean. Of all the photographs I took when he was small, none better captures the spirit of the child than this.

Though both my grandmothers sewed, it was my aunt who taught me how. My mother never cared for sewing. She was all tomboy and outdoors woman, and saw no need to sew for herself when her mother could sew, for her, clothes at least as nice as any found in a department store. When I was young and not so encumbered by the to-do list, I made many of my own things, even my own wedding dress.

Now Dark-haired Daughter has taken a resolute interest in sewing and fashion design, and my mother has pitched in to buy her a machine. We went yesterday to pick up the sewing machine of choice, a Husqvarna Viking Prelude 370, along with a couple of beginner’s books on sewing and fabrics. Let the fun begin!