My least favourite question

Sometimes I come to write you a letter and I think...but I have said it all. I have written you more than 400 letters. I don't know what to say. And then I begin to tap on the keys and the music appears.

I remember friendships and relationships are not about "creating content" or making stuff up just to have something to say. Relationships are about being there and showing up for each other. In the quiet times, the busy times, the happy or the hard times. Sometimes my friend Katherine and I walk nearly everyday. And when we show up to walk the only thing new might be what we had for supper, or what we watched on Netflix, or how well we slept. And that is ok. We are walking through the world together,

As I have gotten older I see that the world is obsessed with novelty. Tiktok videos, reels, silly dance, fifty things not to wear. Headlines to catch your attention. And the more I see this the more I realize I am here for one important thing, to show up and hook rugs and be good to others. And that I will do that with good intentions. And like the loop itself that I pull up, I will do it over and over again. There will be new colours, new designs, new ideas. There will be art and love and joy. And please God, there will be grace. In her book, Women Thriving in Leadership, Dr. Kathy Toogood, a rug hooker herself, says, "Grace means slowing down enough to hear that still small voice affirming the work that is mine to do and letting go of everything else."

We do not have to get caught up in the trap of novelty and constantly reinvent ourselves or expect only the marvellous. We are allowed to grant ourselves compassion, relish the ordinary, and talk about the mundane. We are allowed to follow ourselves inside to our own little souls and take the time hear ourselves think. I can hear myself best with the hook in my hand or walking. It is not always the new that makes the difference in our lives, sometimes it is the things that remain.

"What's New?" is one of my least favourite questions. When someone asks me it puts all the onus on me to come up with something interesting to take the conversation along. I almost feel like I have to make something up, lol, because my life is made up of many of the somethings over and over again. Walking, writing, hooking rugs, family time, minor travel, cooking are my life. So I try not to ask others that question and close instead, "How have you been spending your days?" or "What do you do with your time". I find the "What's new?" question funny because often it will be asked repeatedly, as if the person forgot they asked it, or as a slightly nervous question. And often when I hear it asked of others, the Nova Scotian reply is often, "Same old, same old.", meaning nothing is new.

 Just where can a conversation like this go. I mean what's the next line? 

So I do not show up here to tell you what's new. I show up here so you will know I am thinking of you, and that I appreciate you. I show up here to thank you for being there, for supporting the studio and all the lives around it. And that is what relationships are made of. I show up here to take a journey inside myself and bring you along with me. I show up here so I can understand what matters, and share that with you. 

I love the John Prine line, "How can you go to work in the morning, come home in the evening and have nothing to say?" For me it is a true reflection on relationships. We owe it to each other to have a little story, a little something to share. We owe it to each other to show up. There is always a little something to say, or to tell. Just a few words, a tiny story, a smile and a shake of the head. When my husband comes home in the evening, I don't make stuff up, I just tell my little things, and I listen to his little things. And we eat supper together and ironically, because there is not a lot new to say we turn on the local news. But we are there together, a witness to each others lives breaking bread. We show up for one another, day after day to build a lifetime.

And so I write to you week after week because I believe that people who hook rugs and express their creativity have something beautiful to share with each other. Grace. We know what we are here to do. I know what I am here to do. I am here to teach myself and others that expressing your creativity makes for a deep and abiding life, a good life. And when I write to you I remind myself of this, and so that is enough, and it is a reason to write.

Thank you for reading.