Hand-Making an Imaginative Life

When I was a little girl, my sister and I played dolls. We had a menagerie of Barbies, trolls, wooden animals, and Cabbage Patch dolls. Cindy and Hildy were the main characters; one was a gray-haired and the other a redheaded troll doll. My sister and I cut off their hair and pierced their ears. Using silk surgical tape that we found in our mother’s scrubs, we fashioned clothes for the little plastic dolls. On cold, rainy, Pacific Northwest days, we would play for hours, creating elaborate plots and complicated relationships.

We had a Barbie townhouse, but it was the display model and the elevator didn’t work. My sis and I fashioned additions to the house using shoe boxes. I picked up an A Team black toy van at a garage sale, which served as transportation. Thinking back on the doll scene, I am amused by our imaginativeness. We invented a handmade life for our dollies using whatever we found around the house.

I’ve been thinking about a hand-made life again lately. As children we rehearse what life will look like with dolls. As teenagers we play at real life by trial and error. Adulthood is different. There are no rehearsals, playtime, or takebacks. As midlife settles in, I appreciate that what I do is dye cast in cloth. It is unerasable. It’s scary and liberating to think about the years behind me and those still left to make. How do I want to craft what time is left?

Perhaps the key to a happy life is a hand-made life. Doing work that feeds the spirit as well as pays the bills is the first step. Putting energy into relationships that are kind, supportive, honest, and true is another. Letting go of the habit of putting on appearances for the community is a third step. To enjoy a life that is strange, beautiful, and uniquely one’s own may not look perfect or successful or even wise. However, a hand-made life feels right. There is a visceral sense of integrity and a deep and abiding joy in creating a self-crafted existence. The seams may not be straight, and the embellishments may not be to anyone else’s liking, by the stitching will hold. A hand-made life is durable.

The little girl who I was, Mo Cleverley, is coming back now. I welcome her. I honor her. I look to her scrappy genius to create a dynamic and interesting world using the materials at hand. I want for nothing when I view my life as a hand-fashioned invention because I enjoy the bounty of simplicity. The secret to joy comes from my imagination.