When I thought about writing a book, or starting a blog, I thought I would tell the story of my life. But life doesn't fit neatly into a story, my stories don't even fit neatly into my life. Like balls of yarn after your kids get their hands on them, or you carry them around obsessively in a bag intending to make something useful out of them, the parts of your life become knotted and wound together. Different story lines may be noticeable by their color or texture but it's almost impossible to see where they intersect, where they begin and end. Which story do I meticulously and obsessively unwind and show you? How on earth can one ball of my life possibly show or explain who I am?
Since having kids, especially since the birth of Z I thought that would be the story. Being a mom, being a dragon. Sitting greedily on my treasure and showing it with pride. Look, this belongs to me! But even dragons have more to their story than piles of gold, and stolen treasures. They hunt and fight, they eat and cry and bath in golden sunlight as precious as the piles hidden in their caves. As the kids grew and I began to have an identity outside of milk provider, nurse, jungle gym, and cleaner of all things that come out of ones body, I thought I could write about my life again.
Which parts though? The artist? No, she hasn't picked up a paint brush or piece of charcoal since becoming a mom. Being a special needs mom, the bizarre absurdity of Prader-Willi, the syndrome of the missing chromosome? It changed me, it may even define me, but it's something outside of myself. An external force outside of my control or my making that insinuates itself into every breath? Please no. I need a break, a place to talk about myself autonomously. Knitting? KNITTING!! But all the things I love about knitting are the separate parts of me all knotted together. Maybe that's THE reason I love knitting. The methodic unwinding of a single strand and weaving it into something useful, something with a name. A continuous line with a beginning and end, a clearly defined purpose. I love the different fibers, the endless use for things most people think are useless. Used up bamboo or sugar cane fiber can be transformed into the softest shining strand of glorious yarn. Even things like plastic bottles can be made into yarn. Cutting up old sheets or shirts and making yarn out of it. Plastic bags knit or crochet into hardy rugs, remaking our trash into something useful and with a purpose, a destiny.
And then there's that. That word; "Destiny". We toss it around to attribute meaning to things we can't explain. We joke and write movies about it, full of overly dramatic reason, like there's a puppet master pulling endless strings connected to everything. The strands of my yarn? We do have a destiny though, all the parts of us full of the potential to end up somewhere unique, somewhere no one else can ever really be because who else can be us? Who else raised parrots, rode horses, and broke their foot trying to stop a donkey attack, had twins, loved that one person to much, has a PWS kid, knits, and named all of her pets after Shakespearian characters? I can't write about only one thing, because I can't only BE one thing.
What I can do is promise not to focus on a narrow part of me. I will probably write a little bit about everything that's a part of me, but this wont be a blog about knitting, or being a special needs mom. Although I'll probably talk a bit about the former, and a lot about the later as they make up the majority of my yarn. But that's the beauty of life, all the colors of our stories, jumbled and tangled and knotted together. That's what I want to write about. How tangled jumbled messes become a beautiful life, the unexpected and terrifying becomes the new normal.
This is the story of The Impossible Girl.
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