Rosanna Dell 11/25/17 Rosanna Dell 11/25/17

When I came back to felting this year, I really intended not to let it take over my life. Because I don't really have that much spare time. Plus, I reasoned, what did I have to gain? I gotta tell you: it's not the way to get rich and famous. Well, in the hands of the right person, I suppose it has been, but that's not been my experience.

Mostly, I think I desired a creative outlet, but also, the recognition that I was doing anything at all. Because the work of a stay-at-home parent is largely invisible. Almost everything you spend your day doing disappears or cycles back into itself. Cleaning, laundry, cooking, dishes, picking up, picking up, picking up. It all needs done again in what, like 2 hours? So felting offers me an opportunity to say, at the end of 4 or 6 or 12 hours of work, here's what I made. And it's not disappearing. It's here to be enjoyed.

I know that being a mom should be enough. And I thought it would be enough for me. But I just felt like something was missing. Now I recognize that what might be missing could very well be some incomplete part of my psyche, some feeling of insecurity or inadequacy, or just a lack of inner peace with my situation in the universe. I shouldn't need to be or produce any certain thing to feel okay about myself, or be happy with my life. But instead of meditating or seeking counseling, I reached for a felting needle and started making things.

And it's felt really good, or at least it did until October, when I started to feel the Christmas push, and I stopped being leisurely about what I made and started felting every spare moment. Staying home from things to felt. Staying in instead of going outside because I thought I should felt. Felting so much that my vision is always blurry from all the close-work. And realizing, a few days ago, that I have completely let go of all the Christmas projects I had in mind for Nettie, in order to felt a few more animals for people I (mostly) don't know.

In a perfect world, I would happily felt for my friends and family, and yes, even strangers, for a good part of every day. But I don't live in a perfect world, and I just have to learn to draw lines. So today I have a little community of animals coming into the Etsy shop. I've worked countless precious hours to bring them to life, and I'm proud of them. I think they are my best work yet.

And now I'm going to step back into my life as a mother of a little girl who will never be two at Christmastime again, and try to enjoy all these moments, making and doing and just being together, with nothing to show for it.

Rosanna Dell 5/11/17 Rosanna Dell 5/11/17

turning a corner

why I can't stop writing mediocre poetry

Since Nettie's been born, I've wanted so badly to write about her and about motherhood and all the little moments that I don't want to forget. But I've had a serious writer's block there. I keep a very straight-forward journal, which is written as daily notes, nothing more. I've tried many times to start a poem or a bit of prose about something that touched me. It just hasn't been accessible. I don't seem to make any headway and what I manage to write, I hate.

All of a sudden, though, I find myself starting poems in my head in response to something funny she said or some bizarre situation we find ourselves in. Then when naptime comes, I run to the computer to try to get it down. They aren't my best work, but they are something. They hold a bit of her, they make a memory.

So much of the first two years was just really physically and emotionally hard for me. Nursing was so precious, but so exhausting, and honestly, it was always a source of stress for me. I worried about my supply and my diet all the time. And having a little person who is completely physically dependent on you is wonderful and I never want to forget all the snuggles, but it is taxing, especially for an introvert like me who needs alone time, time to unplug from people.

I ran out of milk about a month ago, right at her birthday time, and though she still asks to "see if Momma has milk" a few times a day, (and we do), we are both doing fine with the fact that I don't. That has brought some separation and some relief for me, and I wonder if it's this separation that has allowed me to start writing about her. Most of what I have felt these first two years has been so intense and overwhelming, and so mixed with angst and fear, that articulating it was too much. I have a dear friend who wrote a beautiful poem about walking at night with her infant son, at least twenty years after the fact. It is so intimate and captures the moment and the feelings so well. I thought of it many times when I was up nursing Nettie in the night.

Maybe in five or ten or even twenty years I'll be able to come back to my daily journal of these first two years and make something more beautiful of it. I don't know. For now, I'm just happy to be capturing any little part of my sweet, kooky girl.