Living

Naming Nature (An Aspect of Reading the World)

Alison BakerLeave a comment
I’m back from Michigan, and had a lovely conference: lots of good ideas bubbling up and rolling around and getting hit back and forth between people like ping-pong balls. But it’s also in Michigan, in the springtime at a campus on rolling hills and deciduous forests just waking up, and it’s always beautiful.
This time someone had the (friendly) audacity to point out that my pictures were of the trees, not the conference panels, and I was forced to acknowledge that part of my draw is to the woods; part of my time is spent sitting and walking outside.
It’s a medieval studies conference, so part of my imagination is always charged with that kind of life: I went to papers about Germanic myths and medieval material culture, so as I carved a path through the trees or took the one someone left for me, I felt a bit of that other world, living closer to nature than we do today. Certainly Michigan is no Scandinavia, but it shares enough for this Californian to have it work on my thoughts. I especially love taking pictures, finding plants I can identify, and plants I don’t recognize:  reading the forest.

Dogwood has been one of my favorite flowers since I was a child. My grandparents lived in Oregon, and Grandma loved Dogwood. I used to ask why there was Dogwood, but no Catwood, and finally concluded that there were wolves in the forest, but no lions, so that must be it. Grandma’s Dogwood tree was a Pacific Dogwood (Cornus nuttalli), and this was Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida), but it still counts. They’re related, and the name indicates that.

It’s the names of nature I’m thinking about today. I bought a book about the character of Natura in the Middle Ages, so more will be coming about the grand idea, but Sunday there was an article in the New York Times about Carl Linnaeus, the Swede who invented the system of binomial nomenclature—the reason you can read the difference between Cornus nuttalli and Cornus florida on the page, and not just on the petals, so that’s the direction I’m headed today. Back to Scandinavia. Back to the woods. Back to the ways we bridge the gap between what we know and how we know it, by turning the world in to words. 
James Prosek, who wrote this article on Linnaeus, is working on a book “about how and why we name and order the natural world,” and his piece in the Sunday Times is a brief account of his retracing Linnaeus’s steps through northern Sweden:  Lapland. Linnaeus had traveled for five months, cataloging, collecting, and naming plants, and keeping a journal. Prosek followed skeptically, with a 21stcentury’s dim view of Linnaeus’s ego and privilege, as he ventured in to Lapland with some intent to exploit the Laplanders and some intent to name the world from his perspective. Prosek points out the flower he names after himself (Linnea borealis) as evidence of his ego, and then as he looks at others of Linneaus’s monikers, he discovers a pattern. 
Linnaeus uses Latin to name his specimens, which was the language of learning in 18th century Sweden. Prosek bristles at that, but softens when he sees Linnaeus’s attempts to be precise but also evocative in his naming. One example that changes his mind is a white flower Linnaeus called Dryas octopetala because the leaves reminded him of oaks, and dryads were the nymphs who inhabited oak trees. The flower has eight petals—a dryad in an eight-paneled skirt. 


Prosek finds this charming, as do I. He notes Linnaeus’s names attempt to be “thoughtful and carry physical and quantitative characteristics, metaphor, and allusion to myth.” It’s this storytelling aspect that appeals to me. Linnaeus attempted to encounter the unfamiliar with the tools of the familiar—to describe new flora in terms he and his readers would understand, to bridge the gap between the unknown and the known by creating names that tell a story. It is the oldest and best way to teach—to engage the imagination to help people remember the facts. 

And it still works, as I sat near the forest’s edge, daydreaming about wolves and a red-cloaked girl and the Dogwood she might pick for her granny on the way to the Chaucer panel.  
Living

What I learned from my mother

Alison Baker2 Comments
I’m still processing my mom’s death, but since it followed a ten year decline in to paranoid schizophrenia, part of me feels like I should be farther along.  In some ways, after all, I’ve been mourning her loss for years. I mourned the absence of a grandmother in my children’s lives, the fact that she was “here” but couldn’t hear our triumphs and setbacks like she used to, the fact that every visit took her farther away from me, but not so far I could find any closure. 
 
Once she was medicated out of the terror-inducing delusions, she was still left with delusions. I had a mom, but not my mom, or at least it didn’t feel that way.  Her passing is allowing me to close some doors and open some that were too painful to deal with. It was too hard to think about the happy memories when I was faced with her suffering at every visit. But now that has passed, I can redirect my thoughts of her to the good ones–and there are many–and give myself permission to roll around in them. 
Upon some reflection, I feel like I’ve had something of an epiphany. I think I got my mind from my dad—my curiosity, my sense of wonder, my joy in learning.  But I know I got my heart from my mom. 
 
The middle child of seven, she grew up around kids and couldn’t wait to start her own family.  When she miscarried twins at 22, the doctors declared her broken and unable to have her own children. That broke her heart, but when it healed, or when the desire to raise a family overcame the failure of Plan A, my parents adopted two children.They told themselves it was better, even, because they could choose how to plan their family—a son first, then a daughter. So they made it happen. And she loved those babies like crazy.
 
Then she had me at 35. She didn’t believe it at first, the “broken” comments about her body still as fresh and wounding as they had been years before. She asked the doctor if one could be “a little bit pregnant.” But there I was.  And she loved me like crazy, too.
She loved lots of people and lots of things–painting and music and reading and traveling–and she was a model for me for how to have a heart open to the world.  Mostly, though, above all else, she loved her family:  her parents and siblings, and then her husband and children, her heart growing with each marriage and birth.
 
I found an anniversary poem she wrote for my dad on their 38th anniversary, where she described their family like a complete set—first came a blond boy, then a red-haired girl, then a little dark-haired baby. Genetically, of course, we’re all different, but she described us so sweetly, like a lucky kid getting all three colors out of the gumball machine. This was all framed in an ode to her husband—the best prize she’d ever won. She loved us, and she made it her life’s goal to make a loving home for us.
 

And she did. Warm, supportive, comforting, cozy, cinnamon-scented, celebratory home-life, I learned from her. And I am ever grateful.

Living

Lots of Work, but No Less Play: Observations on Academic Worklife and Personal Happiness

Alison BakerLeave a comment
Every once in a while a student who’s considering going in to academia asks me how I manage to maintain a happy work/life balance.  I certainly don’t feel like an expert, but I am happy. But he first answer to that question has little to do with me:  find a partner who supports you and likes seeing you happy.
Rob and I got married very young. We were both sophomores in college, both enjoying college, and both invested in a long haul, education-wise. We were also both youngest children, so a friend of mine who was interested in Birth Order and personality warned us that “Two youngest children will spend each other in to the ground.”
I suppose he wasn’t wrong.  We’re still paying off student loans, even as our children get ready for college. What we both brought to the relationship, whether from birth order or some other reason, was a conviction that we deserved to be happy, and joy at seeing the other person happy. That was enough to be getting on with.
Some of the ways that has been borne out over the years are by spoiling ourselves and each other by spending money on our respective hobbies. One of the vows we wrote in to our wedding ceremony was “to encourage each other’s development as an individual, through all the years and changes of our lives.” One thing about getting married at 19: growing up and changing needs to be understood and embraced. He plays WarHammer, a game which involves dropping a ton of cash on plastic bits you can’t even play with until you’ve built and painted them. It also means I happily spend $20 on a single stamp set, seeing it as an investment in my future happiness.


It also means we’re protective of each other’s time. He’s quick to point out that a free weekend is sometimes worth more (cosmically) than what I would make grading Graduate Writing Tests, and I was overjoyed when my raise meant he could drop a class at the school that was both farthest away and the least fun for him.

Mostly, though, it means we have each other’s back in terms of support. When he’s got grading to do, I safeguard his time by picking up slack around the house. When I have something to write, he packs the kids off to Magic Mountain for the day.
Perhaps what’s most surprising about this is not how stinking lucky I am (I am—I’m aware!), but how this balance happened in a single generation.  My mom was delighted to be a Stay At Home Mom, and my dad was delighted to be a Provider.  But somehow as they raised me, it never occurred to me not to work outside the home. And Rob, who was raised by a single mom, always knew he wanted to be an involved dad.
Maybe that’s a place to start, or in my case, end—start from the understanding that you need to work—to contribute—but with the knowledge that a) there are different kinds of work, and home-making counts, and b) if you work at something you love, you’re already halfway to balance.  Second, remember that no matter how much you love your job, it is a job.  As such it supports your life, but is not your life.  This is the difference between living to work and working to live, right?  You owe it to yourself and to your family to have a full, happy home-life, and if you have kids, to model that for them.
And then, if you can, get on the Scheduling Committee, so you can write your own schedule. 😏
PS:  The Robbian Corollary to Work/Life Balance requires far fewer words.  He believes you need to be challenged to be happy, but also supported.  So the best way to do that is to have a demanding, challenging job and a relaxed, happy home.  Hard Job/Easy Home, rather than Easy Job/Hard Home.  I could be wrong, but I expect that’s his advice for everything from choosing a career to choosing a partner to the Grand Secret of Happiness on Earth.  He’s much more succinct (and dramatic) than I.
Reading

Beginning Bibliotherapy

Alison Baker2 Comments
Confession:  Last week was horrible.
I don’t really have the energy to blog.  But I thought maybe I could share some books that cheer me up.  You know, a top ten list of my Bibliotherapy favorites?  Here’s what I’ve got.
1. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.  Kids’ books count, y’all, and this one is an absolute delight. Part allegory, part quest, part punster’s dream, this book never fails to make me laugh.  I found it as an adult, actually, reading it to my kids.  But now I recommend it to everyone I can. Like you!  Enjoy.
2. Julio Cortázar’s Blow-Up and Other Stories.  Even though some of these have a dark edge to them, many of them are so surreal that I find myself able to dissociate their tragedy from mine, which is a step to looking more clinically at my own problems and sorting them out.  I particularly recommend “Axolotl,” “The Night Face-Up,” and “Letter to a Young Lady from Paris.”  You won’t regret it.
3. Fairy Tales.  Most will do, but here I’ll recommend a lovely collection of Baba Yaga tales; nothing makes you feel back on your game like overcoming a witch, over and over again.  Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales translated by Sibelan Forrester.
4. Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.  These are searing, beautifully written letters, that I discovered in college when I needed them most.  I still return to them, and they never fail to soothe.
5. Poetry by John Keats or W.B Yeats.  Not just because their names visually rhyme.  Because their speak of beauty like a friend, and to read them is to feel connected to that transcendence.
Ok.  5, not 10.  But it’s a start.  Spenser only wrote half of the Faerie Queene too.
But what would you add?  Do you have a book you recommend to make people feel better? Bibliotherapy is becoming a thing, you know, and we need to be ready with our prescriptions.
Living

Stones and Stories

Alison BakerLeave a comment

Last week was my kids’ spring break, so we hopped in the car and drove to Utah, staying two nights in Bryce Canyon and two at Zion National Park.  My kids are teenagers in the 21stcentury, so by nature sedentary and attached to their computers and cell phones as if to IVs.  They are also my kids and Rob’s, so they have the added bonus of being bookish, imaginative, and mildly introverted (I totally was an introverted kid—I think I’ve grown up to be an ambivert, but I still LOVE my downtime, for anyone snickering), so they resist long adventures and would naturally choose to stay home and “chill” for spring break.  Unfortunately, for their short-term goals, I think it’s important to a) unplug, b) explore the natural world, and c) encounter and begin to understand the rest of the world.  Poor kiddos.

Bryce Canyon awoke my inner rock hound.  It is a geologist’s playground, and we soaked up both breathtaking vistas (literally—it’s roughly 9000 feet elevation, so the air was thin!) and scientific descriptions of the rock formations. “Hoodoo,” for instance, is the glorious term for the pillars of stone that form as the walls of limestone erode from walls to a line of individual spires. Of course we went to the geology talk with a ranger, where we learned about the eons of formation and erosion of the canyon as well as the strata of stone and mixture of minerals that make it so beautiful—pinks and oranges and reds of the stone against the green pine trees, the blue sky, and in April, the white snow.
But the best part for me was when he told us the legends.  He barely hinted, just teasing us with one story, really, that the Navajo told about Coyote luring all the bad guests to a spot where he promised them a banquet, but instead turned them all to stone. Those hoodoos, man. They look like people.
Because they form in rows, they look like lines of people, like families or groups of people interacting.  I usually have one eye on wildlife and find myself repeating “someone lives there” every time we see a cave or an obvious shelter that could be a den, but here I was muttering the whole time, “They look like people,” so I may have been smug when the ranger told us this tale. And I was struck by the common theme of hospitality, remembering my Odyssey, and my Beowulfand all the other tales that teach us about being good guests and hosts, “lest we entertain an angel unawares.”
Tolkien said “he sees no stars who does not see them first of living silver made that sudden burst…” (and some more great stuff, in my favorite poem, “Mythopoeia.”)  This was that kind of moment.  I could not see the stones as stones completely until I had my imaginative moment about them.  I know they’re masterpieces of sediment and erosion, but they look like people—people in line, people walking together, people with animals (some were shorter and decidedly canine-looking, or maybe I was getting carried away…).


 I had a momentary affinity with those Navajo all those years ago, who looked and saw stories. I wasn’t expecting that.  Beauty, yes.  Nature, yes.  Geology, yes.  But not kinship.  That’s another reason to keep waking the kids up and shoving them in the car and dragging them out in to the beautiful world. 

Picture Books

Cinderella Stories

Alison BakerLeave a comment
Why do we love Cinderella so?  It’s a rags-to-riches story, so it teaches us that no matter how low we feel, there is always the chance that we can escape our dismal situation and live like a princess or a prince.  (There are Cinder-fella versions as well, naturally.)  There seem to be two strains:  either the inherent nobility of Cinderella is revealed—she turns out to be of noble blood somehow; this is most prevalent among European variants, or she is truly poor in material wealth, but rich in spirit–a diamond in the rough–and her circumstances ultimately rise to match her nature.
The first kind is now as common as the Disney version in America.  Cinderella’s plight stems in part from being originally noble, a lord’s daughter or higher, who after her mother dies is reduced to servant status in her step-mother’s home.  This is the Grimms’ version, the Disney version, the film version of Ever After.  Some of this Cinderella’s trauma stems from that fall, from the shame of having to act like a servant, when she is not born to it, and her credit stems from the grace with which she adapts to her servitude.
But there are LOTS of versions of Cinderella.  The ones where she starts low have their own appeal, and maybe it lasts longer.  Wishing your nobility will be discovered is an increasingly dated notion.  Rather, the idea that there is a distinction between nobility of spirit and circumstance seems more believable.  It is an old, old notion that nobility is tied to beauty and goodness, and one propagated by the nobility.  Medieval expectations that beautiful souls resided in beautiful bodies operate on the same understanding as the axiom that “might makes right.”  God wouldn’t be so cruel as to put an ugly soul in a beautiful body, any more than he would allow a bad guy to win a duel.
In an age where those expectations are deemed foolish, though, Cinderellas who are poor but virtuous do very well for themselves.  Some come to us from different cultures, without the monarchy baggage that Europeans carry.  I’m thinking of my picture book collection here, which contains “Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters,” an African tale from Zimbabwe where the girls are poor, but beautiful, and the king tests them in strikingly similar ways to Jesus testing his believers, to see who are virtuous–generous, and gentle in their dealings with others. Or there is the Native American story “The Rough-Face Girl,” about a girl whose face is scarred by sitting too close to the fire, and who wins her future husband by her ability to see his true nature (as a spirit being in the heavens, riding the swaths of Milky Way for sled runners).
In these versions, the kindness of the girl is rewarded, as well as her humility.  Those qualities are rewarded in the gender-bent versions as well.  Helen Ketteman’s “Bubba The Cowboy Prince” may be my favorite of these, where Bubba is just a farm hand who wins the hand of the wealthiest landowner around, Miz Lurleen, with the help of his fairy god-cow.  (I’m not kidding.  It’s glorious–both the fairy god-cow and the fact that the magic glass slipper has been replaced by the manky, mucky boot of a “real cowboy.”)

The upshot is the same, though, in all of these versions.  If you’re kind and humble, you’ll be rewarded by a step up socially and a happy marriage.  Those who try to trick or wheedle their way in to riches will not win.  Nice gals (and guys) do.  Maybe that’s why we keep rewriting Cinderella.  We really want that to be true.

Living

Reading Rock Stars

Alison BakerLeave a comment
When I was in grad school I took a Dickens seminar, and it was awesome.  Not only did I have incentive to read a bunch of long novels (which I instinctively shy away from), I enjoyed learning about the author in a way one doesn’t get to outside a Major Authors course. There were biographical tidbits throughout the semester, and I left with the feeling that Dickens was someone I would have liked, despite his foibles. The thing I loved the most about him was that he was characterized as a rock star, drawing huge crowds, and doing public readings in the way one thinks of concerts today. He had fans clambering for the next installment of his novels the ways we impatiently wait for our favorite bands’ new releases or anticipated sequels to movies.
It also made me nostalgic for a time I never knew—when an author could have that status.  I’ve been to book readings and signings, and they’re always modest but wonderful moments, perhaps the more wonderful for their intimacy. But I’m never under the illusion that books are as powerful a draw as musicians or movie stars. I’m still not. But I was pretty close last Thursday night.
I took my family to see “An Evening with Neil Gaiman” at the Segerstrom Concert Hall, which seats close to 2000.  It was pretty full. I had no idea what to expect.  Would he read?  Would he chat?  Did he have a performance shtick? Incidentally, it’s hard to sell an outing to teenagers without really knowing what to expect. They’re well-behaved, but they were… reluctant. They both would have stayed home if that had been an option.  But they both had a great time.
It turns out “An Evening” means some reading, some impromptu chatter, and some responding to question cards that audience members filled out before the show.  In all, Gaiman read seven pieces, from a chapter out of his retelling of Norse Myths to a poem he wrote after visiting a Poetry Brothel for his stag party. There was even an encore piece. We clapped; we stood; we sat back down, and he read one more short story. It was utterly delightful.
I left heartened about a world that seems to be super digital, but wherein crowds still form to hear stories. They cheered for him when he mentioned his books and their success, and they cheered when he told a story about his toddler son. They listened, rapt, when he discussed the serious shift in culture from when his novel American Gods was written, and why and how it’s become contentious in an atmosphere of recent travel bans and immigration issues.It was a wonderfully human evening.

Gaiman has a diverse audience, from tweed jackets to tattoos and cargo shorts, and we fit in just fine: another family raising readers, happy to listen in real time to a great story.  

Living

Living the Dream–a view from last summer

Alison BakerLeave a comment
Rob recently washed my car for me.  I’d been meaning to, but never got around to it, and he did it for me, understanding my main motivation.  He approached me with two stickers in his hand and announced that it was time.  When the car was clean, I could put on the stickers we got on our vacation this summer—one from Yosemite and one from Muir Woods.  Across from the Yellowstone sticker we got last summer, I look like quite the budding naturalist.  Or granola head.  Or, given the fact that my car is a hybrid, an environment-conscious human.  Guilty on all counts.  He smiled:  “Look at you.  Hybrid car, garden in the backyard–you’re living the dream, aren’t you?” 
 
I am!  My life right now tends dangerously toward perfect.  The garden has always been a dream, and we’ve tried several times, with mixed results.  The most success I think we had was the herb garden, where I grew seven or eight different herbs, all of which were intended for use in the kitchen.  I made a really terrific marinara once with entirely home grown herbs and tomatoes (the tomatoes had grown rogue, the result of a happy bird population, not our purposeful planting).  It was delicious.  It took way too much time.  I made it once—photographed it, otherwise documented it, and moved on.
 
This year’s garden is the result of many years of drought and of our increasing awareness of the value of water.  In the last few years, as water restrictions have tightened (and we tightened even more than the restrictions—we were VERY good Californians) all of our lawn has died, front and back.  We’ve decided to xeriscape the front, but for the back, we let the dog decide.  Ok, that’s not entirely true, but close.  When the kids were little, it was important that we had a grassy backyard for them to play in. 
 
Now that they’re mostly grown, they don’t play outside like they did.  But the dog….  A few months ago we got a Bassett Hound puppy.  The first time we walked him around the block, he couldn’t make it; we had to carry him home.  As he got stronger, he made it around the block by pausing now and again in people’s lawns for break—like he plops right down on a neighbor’s grass and expects you to wait a few minutes while he catches his breath.  Then he got stronger, and we started to suspect he just liked the feel of the cool grass.  

So we got some sod for the backyard.  For the dog.
 
The backyard is too big to fill the whole thing with lawn again, though, so we just made him a patch to sit on.  It’s more of a run, really, eight feet wide and about twenty feet long, and when we showed it to him, he was delighted.  It’s perfect.  And it doesn’t take much water for a lawn that small.  But the yard is twice that size.  So we planted a garden. 
Now my backyard is half grass and fruit trees and half garden.  Sunflowers, corn, cucumbers, zucchini and yellow summer squash.  For the past few weeks, we’ve been eating home grown food, and it has filled a happy little part of my heart.  It’s wonderful to feel self-sufficient (I’m not under any illusions I could survive off-grid, but eating my own zucchini is marvelous), and it’s wonderful to decorate with a garden.  

It reminds me of my mother who always proclaimed she decorated with books.  Talk about blending the functional and the beautiful.  Books on the walls, and greenery and flowers in the yard.  Add to that our pretty happy positions at work (Rob is teaching a bit less, to pursue other interests, and I am at a comfortable spot in my career, where I can take some time to learn Italian and call it research), our kids who are actually enjoying high school, and the burgeoning little community of our two cats, two dogs, and countless itinerant outside critters including birds, squirrels, skunks, lizards, butterflies, and bees (who are so pleased we planted sunflowers!), and he’s right:  I’m living the dream. In the world and of the world.  Physical abundance and mental contentment.  Watching my garden grow.
Living

“I’m going on an adventure!”

Alison BakerLeave a comment
This spring I’m on sabbatical. It’s my second, and I continue to have mixed feelings about it.  Especially during finals week, when my charming students are their most charming, fussing mildly about whether or not I’ll be at graduation.  This sort of thing compounds my regret.  That, and I really miss teaching.
But I’m going on an adventure.  It’s not a literal journey–that was last weekend, when I dragged everyone out of bed at 5:00 on a Saturday to drive three hours in to the desert to see the Superbloom at Anza-Borrego State Park. I’m often kicking my family into that sort of adventure.  Let’s drive a thousand miles to Yellowstone! Let’s take a train to Seattle! They’re lucky this weekend was only a day trip.  But it was beautiful. We took lots of pictures, and we took a long look at what happens when the best circumstances happen in the least likely of places.
My sabbatical will not be that kind of adventure, though.  I’m not going to London to work in the British Library or to Paris to look at Unicorn tapestries, or even on a journey to the Lonely Mountain, like Bilbo Baggins, whose quote I stole for my title.  I’m going on an entirely mental adventure; the farthest I’m planning on is a café with wifi and good tea, and maybe a library or two.
I’m starting by giving myself the gift of reading some books I’ve been putting off.  It is the eternal plight of the English major never to have enough time to read what we want to.  I do have the enviable position of assigning books I want to read for class, but that does take away a little bit of the self-indulgent delight of reading something just because it’s cool. On my bookshelf next to the comfy chair, there is a modest pile that will prime the pump, as it were, and put me in the mood for writing my own fiction.
Then the real adventure begins.  I have great plans.  Finish one book, write supplementary teaching materials and a book proposal, and start the reading and drafting for the next one. It’s a good time to start a new project, what with the world waking up and showing its most brilliant colors and tempting us to believe things can be more beautiful than ever we thought.  I hope it inspires you to do something brave too!  Happy Spring!
Living

My Happy Hobby

Alison BakerLeave a comment
I think it’s important to have a hobby—maybe not for absolutely everyone, but for almost everyone. Even those of us who love our jobs (and I do—I really do) need something else to do with our heads and  our hands. Maybe those of us who have no physical product in our jobs need one most of all. I certainly felt that. As the child of an architect, I often toured buildings my dad worked on. He worked for the state, so some of the buildings he worked on were prisons, which was less interesting to a preteen and teenager, but there were plenty of city buildings he worked on too, especially since we lived in the state capitol, so frequently as we drove around town, he would point out the window and say “That’s one of ours.” If he weren’t the lead architect, he was still involved, consulted, and proud. And he used to say how wonderful a thing a building was, because everyone from the architect to the bricklayers to the electricians could all point at it and say, “That’s mine. I did that.” 
When I went in to teaching, there was much less opportunity for such a proclamation. About halfway through grad school–knee deep in research, student teaching, and still taking my own classes–I thought about needing a hobby. I couldn’t really point to anything and say “I made that.” Students are much more complex than their education, and no matter how life-changing I like to think an English class can be, I was under no illusion that I “made” anything really.  Intellectual work has little physical product. Even if one writes a book, pointing at the book doesn’t really point at the product in the same way a potter points at a pot or an artist points at a sculpture or a cook points at a pastry. I started seeking out hobbies to fill that need.
 
I tried a lot of hobbies. My husband watched, amused, as I tried on sewing, jewelry-making, pottery, oil painting, needlepoint, and others. I still have vestiges in my closets of failed hobbies, and they occasionally come in useful, proving the hoarder’s worst nightmare—as soon as you throw something away, you’ll need it. Some of these hobbies, I just wasn’t any good at.  Sewing felt too much like work and involved too much math, actually (which is just an excuse—math isn’t an impediment unless I don’t actually enjoy what I’m doing. Then it’s an extra excuse to drop it.) For a variety of reasons from the silly (my mother did it: that’s her hobby) to the practical (it does take a long time to make an article of clothing), I gave up on sewing and all these others. Pottery stuck the longest; I really enjoyed wheel-throwing, and the useful, pretty (sometimes) things I could make, but when we moved 2000 miles away from my pottery instructor and I had babies and toddlers to tend and tenure to work toward, that fell by the wayside too. 

It wasn’t until my toddlers stopped being toddlers and were safely ensconced in school, and I had tenure and could relax a little, that I found the hobby that stuck. I was invited to a stamping party by the mom of one of my daughter’s friends, and we made a greeting card and a bookmark. Papercrafting. Yes.
 
For a bookish person, paper was a natural medium, and for the incurable happy-ass that I am, something sweet and cute that you can send to people was perfect. Also, part of me resists technology and values hand-crafted-ness, so the idea of making my own Christmas cards was a delight. And it was practical (HA!)—buying stamps was an investment and I could stop buying cards and tags. (I laugh because this actually is true: I haven’t bought a greeting card in over six years, but the amount of money I have spent on paper and ink and pretty stamps and cute ribbon… has very likely FAR surpassed what I might have spent on Hallmark. Still, not all hobbies have a return on investment like that, so I use it to rationalize pretty readily.)  Finally, the time required to do something meaningful was much less; I could squeeze in making a card or a bookmark in a few minutes if I needed to. It was a perfect hobby for this working mommy. My kids were growing up and were less reliant on me for every little thing, and my husband was great at encouraging me to take more than ten minutes to enjoy my hobby, but still, one of the appeals was that it wasn’t a time sink. 
 

So I dove in. Not only do I make all the greeting cards we use, I make enough to give packs of cards as gifts. I make all our gift tags and most of our gift bags and boxes. We still buy brown craft paper to wrap, but that’s just about it. I decorate the paper, make my own gift bags or decorate plain store-bought ones, and keep us in bookmarks, despite the puppy’s best efforts to seek out and destroy them all. It is a happy hobby because it revolves around gift giving, and that makes other people happy. It makes me happy too—to make something pretty and useful, and honestly just to MAKE something. The act of creating something fills some need very deep and ancient for me. I’m not making artistic masterpieces, but I am making things we use, and I’m making cards that require us to handwrite a note to people we love, and that makes me happy too in this age of emails and texts and Facebook reminders to wish someone a Happy Birthday. So in addition to making a card, I’m making a personal connection. I like that, probably, most of all.