I feel really bad about not posting, but life has been dense.
OK, the update.
I was definitely the only person who wore a bug suit at the event last night. A couple of people even told me that they couldn't believe I made my outfit. I am sure they were being honest.
The high point for me of the whole black tie event though was seeing my students. Some of them were working as servers, some where on the door. I had a moment just while I was leaving when one girl found me in the hall by the coat check and said " Come here give me a hug" and she told me that I had given her confidence to be herself. That meant so much to me.
Is there anything we can do as adult women that is more important than giving a young girl faith in herself? What a protection that is from what we adult women know really lies ahead.
I want to tell you a story.
I once had an important job. Good salary, great pension, fancy title, etc.
Well then one of my sons graduated from high school and I went to the ceremony. I had one of those moments standing in the auditorium and I looked at the graduating class and I looked at the teachers and I thought, their lives have been worthwhile, their work goes on to the future. And at that moment I knew I should have been a teacher, like my dad who left a good profession and went into the high school classroom.
You know when my dad died we had to put speakers on the outside of the church so all the kids who were standing in the street could hear.
Well the universe noticed and let me be a teacher too,
What matters in life?
There is a lot should have mattered to me that didn't. In the end all that really matters to me is young people and my sewing. And looking at other women who sew and really seeing who they are. Does that matter?
Does it matter that when I see someone's mother, some women in jeans and a hundred obligations. Some woman with a few extra pounds with a to-do list from last week, and so many people asking her to be someone - that I can see a focus on a bound buttonhole, on those pants that finally, after twenty years of trying that really fit, that I can see someone there really trying.
I notice.
That, in my bug suit, is who I am and what I see,
Sewing is the spirit man, sewing is the spirit.
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- Barbara
- I am a mother, a grandmother, and a teacher. But whatever happens in my life, I keep sewing. I have worked as a political communicator and now as a teacher in my formal life. I have also written extensively on sewing. I have been a frequent contributor and contributing editor of Threads magazine and the Australian magazine Dressmaking with Stitches. My book Sew.. the garment-making book of knowledge was published in May 2018 and is available for pre-order from Amazon
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8 comments:
wonderful post. I retired from the classroom 3 years ago and I appreciate your views.
Good for you. So worthwhile to have a job that means something other than money and prestige,
Terry
The comment from your student is the best tribute. But I have no idea what a "bug suit" is.
sorry Shams, the bug suit is a sort of poncho thing I made to go over a LBD and my granddaughter said the fabric looked like bugs. maybe you had to be there.
Awesome post. I am a teacher and consider myself lucky that I get to do do what I love and share it with young people. Man they make me laugh and they make me think and wonder. When that stops I know it's time to retire.
Thanks for boosting me up at the end of a long day. Good luck with all that you have going on. Glad that the bug suit worked out
The bug eyes you gained while wearing the bug suit allow you to see the good in other people. What an awesome super power! So much better than invisibility.
What a beautiful post. Thank you so much.
That moment in the auditorium was the turning point in your life. The part that makes you realize you're alive and making a differnence in the world!
Loved your story.
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