I could barely close the lid on my scrap bin and I found the old apron with the seahorses on it (I was drawn to the 1970’s oranges and browns). It all screamed “Potholders”.
Sometimes I like to listen to music when I work, sometimes I need silence other times I want voices, talking. All three can either be distracting or just the right thing to free up my brain and help me focus while I work.
Today I tuned into VPR and listened to John Lewis’ memorial service as I sewed.
There were times I was crying as I worked, but the one of the things that really stuck with me was when Barack Obama called John Lewis a Founding Father of our country.
What an inspiring and hopeful idea to believe that a Founding Father didn’t have to be alive at a country’s inception. Because our country is always changing and growing that the Founding Fathers and Mothers are still yet to be.
That idea gave me a vision of a country I never was able to imagine before.
If John Lewis is a Founding Father of our country then that country must then be one where all people are not only equal under the law but treated equally in that society. Or at least it’s a country where it’s an accepted belief to be worked towards.
I’d love to link my potholders up to this idea somehow, but they’re really just potholders.
Except that, what often happens when I’m listening to something that moves me when I’m creating when I look at whatever it is I made, I remember what I was listening too.
So I think maybe I’ll keep one of these potholders.
I’ll hang it in the kitchen and use it (I know Jon likes to say I don’t cook, but it does happen once in a while) and when I do, I’ll imagine our country as the place where everyone really is equal and John Lewis is as well known as George Washington.
Those are really neat, Maria…I may have to have one! With a special meaning too. A memory of 2020.
That phrase struck me too, Maria, and I thought it was very appropriate to consider John Lewis in that way. Thank you for sharing your feelings about the service.
I was a teenager in the 60s and I remember wondering why the Freedom Movement hadn’t happened long before then.
Now I am feeling angry, sad, hopeful and many other emotions, seeing a determination to go forward, to the goal that should never have taken this many decades to reach.
I believe it will be reached. Because of you, John Lewis.
We do seem to slowly be moving in that direction Larua.
Maria, I too cried today during John Lewis’s funeral. Of course I didn’t know the man, but I will miss his presence and inspiring words and deep compassion for all lives. President Obama captured his essence completely. You made me think more about him being a Founding Father and what it really means. Your last words are so hopeful. I hope to live to see that happen. Since you spoke about the potholders I will check Etsy and buy one so that I too can look at it and remember that great man.
T image of that world that I imagined came from sciencefiction movies I’ve seen Patricia. But then so often those things in science fiction come to be. And some sooner than I would have thought.
I should have the potholders all done next week.
From The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek: page 88
“See all my fabric, child?…Well, them cloths are a lot like folks….There’s the colorful and dull, ugly and pretty, old and new’uns. But in the end we’s all fabric, cut from His cloth.”
Ah nice Mary. That gives other meaning to the potholders. thank you.