Have you ever watched children play?

You will understand this.

If you have ever watched children play there is an intensity and focus about them that most of us don't see again. Particularly in ourselves.  It reminds me always of Piaget, "play is the work of children."

I think I go there again, many of us do, when I sew. And I haven't had the luxury to go there with this intensity, like I am having in my week of hotel sewing, in a long while.

This is a different kind of work than I usually do.

Let me tell you about a job I had for quite a while until I started teaching.

I used to work for a politician. It wasn't a job I choose but one I got, if you understand the difference. It was fairly interesting but most of all a bill payer. Let me explain politicians, these are people who think that the point of your life is their life. I remember once in the middle of an election when I was taking media calls and so tired I was practically hallucinating thinking that if I said "you know my leg just fell off" he would say " Gee that reminds me of the time that my leg almost fell off, did I ever tell you the story about..." I think you get the picture. I still get occasionally called back to do some of that work. They find you.

That time in my life was when I started to stash. It was the closest I could get to sewing, so I ordered online and cruised the sewing sites and blogs and  planned so much more than I could ever, ever do. I couldn't even get near to it.

That backlog is part of what I am sewing through now, as I understand that stash, and why I am going to have to cut some of it loose so I can start living in the present. No point in living with old intentions. The ones you have outgrown.

So this week I have found myself sewing pretty intensely, not rushed, not guilty, not deadlined. Thinking what a good feeling it would be to think of something and make it the same day or week. 

I am deep into it and it is more than play. I feel like it is my real work and I am getting back to who I am.

I have had unusual nights this week and I want to talk about that too.

I have been dreaming with the same intensity as I am sewing and I don't know much about brains or dreaming but mine has decided to pull a lot of stuff I had put away like my stash and bring it out. This has been some hard sleep I can tell you. I have had mother dreams, intense dreams about my children, that they were in terrible trouble but then they were OK, about the sadness my first husband made me feel, something I have not realized, or admitted, to myself all these years because I was so busy showing that I was just fine, absolutely just fine, I never once used the word sad in the daytime or in my mind ever, I have dreamed about my dogs, here and gone, they are all with me in these dreams, and most of all in all my dreams my dad is there. He has been gone too now for 16 years, but there is my dad helping me out and making me feel it is all OK and I wake up feeling that way you do when you have a dad there, and I know I miss him but I also feel that feeling you used to have when you were a kid lying in your bed at night listening to the sounds of your parents around the house and knowing that someone was taking good care of you. I am waking up like that.

My sewing like this is bringing me back to myself and I realize that this is my particular, personal important play and there is a reason I am doing this that is about far more than making clothes.