family
Family unites us; but it's also a challenge. All about fighting to stay together, and loving every moment of it.
Gifts for Madeline Grace
Dear Reader , I told my friend I was going to enter a Fiskars competition, and she wanted to know what my pet-lacking self planned to do with a whole bunch of cat food. “I’d donate it, of course. But that’s besides the point. Fiskars are a brand of scissors.” Much laughter ensued. I’ve found myself spreading awareness about my favorite brand of scissors ever since. Well played, marketing team. A handful of young adults in Indiana know more now than ever before about Fiskars scissors. Honestly, I didn’t even know that they were thing that people didn’t know about. I’ve taken my Fiskars-informed life for granted. I’ve simply always known that any other brand of scissors won’t quite ‘cut it’. I suppose we have my “top-of-the-line”-loving-father to thank. And now, I’ve also paid ten dollars to sign up for this whole Vocal+ thing so that I could enter this competition. Twenty points for marketing.
By Tina Miklius5 years ago in Humans
Going home
The scissors are easy between my fingers, familiar. They carve a serpentine path along swaths of blue tissue paper, one row after the next, undulating gracefully between corners, paper waves slipping into a waiting tray with a whisper. I get lost in the rhythm of these waves effortlessly. Hours pass like moments while trays of blue, aqua and teal fill beneath my fingertips. Leaves, too, with their slow and steady rhythm transform seconds into hours. Snip, snip. One. Snip, snip. Two. Flower petals, one arched snip after another. Each taking its own unique shape, to be assembled at some point into something greater than itself. Though these - the leaves and petals - can be more challenging here, so small and impish, they easily slip beneath a fingernail or blow askance in the current from the air conditioner, lost forever. Cutting water is easier.
By Sheri Croy5 years ago in Humans
Scraps
I am little, and the piles of fabric tower around me, a maze of color and joy. I dig my hands into the buckets of buttons, feeling the cool plastic and glass up to my elbows. I press my face against the softest fabrics, the ones my mom says are for baby quilts. It smells of wood and cotton. At my height, the quilts on the walls are masterpieces, a museum I can carefully touch. I feel their fabric ever so lightly as my mom and her friends look at fat quarters and patterns. The snip snip snip of scissors and hush of women talking wash over me. We are in an Amish quilt shop.
By Thea Angeli5 years ago in Humans
Happy Birthday to a Renaissance Dad
At some point, as a family, we decided that on someone's birthday, you could only tell stories about them. I think I started this, on my birthday, the eternal attention seeker that I am. It might not be true, but the McFamily generally goes along with the idea that it holds some stock if you think it's true. (I also swear I invented the word sexting-- or at least used it before I heard it to admonish a sister for texting a boyfriend at the dinner table.)
By Regina McMenamin5 years ago in Humans
Homage
There’s a part of each of us that will forever be deeply connected to where we grew up. Our hometowns etch themselves in our souls, and traces of our upbringings weave themselves throughout the fabric of our futures. For me, that’s rural Kansas - so rural that my hometown was not even home to a traffic light or gas station. In that small town country life, discovering avenues for recreation was often up to me. I never had to look very far and—more often than not, opportunities for entertainment found me. Some of my fondest childhood memories are rooted in lazy Sundays at the saddle shop on Main Street; those hours quickly became my favorite way to spend weekends. The workers there were so skillful and I was enamored by the way their scissors glided through the leather hides, how easily their awls punched through the pieces. Just as effortlessly, my desire for entertainment became a yearn for a craft; this seed was planted in those early years, but it was up to me to water it.
By Marissa Edwards5 years ago in Humans
The Joyous Rebellion of Pockets
Walking by the lake, my daughter casually pulls a candy out of her pocket, pulls on the crinkly twists on either end, liberates the treat into her mouth, then hands me the still-sticky cellophane wrapper, which I stuff with a small thrill of pleasure into my own pocket. It will join a few coins, a pretty rock collected from the beach and a seasoning of dirt or dried flower petals plus pocket fuzz. I smile to myself, feeling slightly naughty and just a little rebellious even after all these years – it’s still liberating!
By Deborah Kellogg5 years ago in Humans
Holy Threads
“Hamma, what are these things that look like maracas but don’t make any noise?” I asked my grandma, so nicknamed because my oldest cousin struggled making the “gr” sound in grandma. It came out of his little mouth as “Hamma” instead, and the name stuck through 13 grandchildren and a still-growing number of great grandchildren.
By Suzy Scullin5 years ago in Humans
My little hobby shop
My Granny was the matriarch of our family. She lived to the ripe old age of 92 and dispensed wisdom, love and creativity to everyone she met in her short life. My other grandmother (referred to as Big Mama) died in her early senior years and gave me the most influencing moment of my whole life. Granny taught me to cook homemade cat head biscuits, how to can and how to sew. Big Mama taught me to crochet, make tallow candle and soap! The influence of both of these remarkable women lead me to open my dream hobby shop. HandmadebyC3GAC is a small produce supplier, soy wax candle, homemade soap shop that supplies local residents in a small town in Alabama and online shoppers creative artisan soaps and candles. Friskars sissors are a part of all my creative projects that I sell in my shop. Both of my grandmothers used friskars sissors as they were the best sharpest, straightest cutting on the market. Each of my grandmothers taught me wisdom of some kind but My fondest memories are of the summer of 1977.
By Leda green5 years ago in Humans
