in the evenings

After the kids are in bed and we've settled for the night, Brandon and I spend an hour or so together talking or watching a show.  This is the time for our piece of normal, for chocolate, maybe some laughter and my bit of making for the day.  Tucked beside the sofa is this enticing basket of softness and color and cheer.

I haven't made it to the sewing machine much at all in the last 2 1/2 weeks, but I have invested many restful moments joining these sunburst crochet squares.  I started joining these about a week before Eleni was born, and I have only a few rows left to join, actually. 

Like any project or plan or item of clothing that I experienced during my pregnancy, I am often struck as I come across it again, confronted and disoriented with the strange reality that my baby was just fine, totally fine at that time.  These touchstones are a time capsule of our life before.  How quickly and mysteriously life does change. 

Back to the blanket.  I am whipstitching the squares together with cream yarn and a chunky needle.  I find it best to work from the back of the work, so that the front of the blanket looks a tad bit nicer.  The most efficient path to join the squares had me stumped at first.  Eventually I learned to attach a whole row in one long stitch line across the width of the blanket.  At that point, only one side of each newly added square is joined to the blanket.  Then, I go back and join the squares' sides together using yarn strings that extend between each column.  You can see the yarn strings hanging out in this photo as I have yet to join the sides of squares together in my most recently added row.  I leave the yarn strings long to use when joining the next row of squares, which reduces the number of times I must tie in with a new joining yarn.

Here's my blanket so far.  I may have to make more squares to bring it to a desired size, or maybe a border?  We'll see.  I'm just feeling it out.

My heart has been quite busy processing lately.  There are many stages of grief, but the most difficult one for me was when my mind kept fighting to find a way out, a way to fix things, a way to somehow make things OK.  I am a fighter.  I would to do anything.  When I want something to be different in my life, when I decide "the way things are" is not good enough,  I will literally move across the country, take my kids out of school, make my own way into a job, because "where there's a will there's a way."  I embrace hard work to make change.  And even though I hope so much for Eleni's healing, I cannot make sure it happens.  I cannot secure her a healthy body in the future.  And I certainly cannot go back in time to fix this (though I really think that should be an option.  Who let that one slide?). 

So, I realized a few days ago that I won't be made happy because I am able to change what happened or to guarantee a normal-ish future for our baby.  Instead, my opportunity for happiness is here every day.  I'll live not just aiming to survive or get through each day.  No.  I'll live searching for happiness in each day, just the way things are now. 

Maybe some days happiness will be hard to find.  Certainly some days are bleaker than others.  But, I'm confident that most days I'll find it.