Perspective

In January, I had purchased a face cleanser that was very thick and wouldn't squeeze out of the bottle. To make it easier, I stood it upside down in the corner of my bathroom counter. It worked. I've been using it ever since.

At the end of May, while packing to go visit my daughter, I noticed that my bottle of hair gel was getting low and wondered if I should take the new one with me. I didn't. It looked like there would be enough for the weekend and there was. When I got home, I put the bottle upside down on the bathroom counter along with the cleanser.

Today is August 7th. Over two months later, I have finally squeezed every last drop out of that bottle and am ready to open the new one. I didn't realize how much was actually still in there. It looked empty. It wasn't. Without this new perspective, I would have thrown away two plus months of a perfectly good product. With it, I've been cutting off the ends of tubes and extracting every little bit of any cosmetic I have. I'm amazed at how much more there is once squeezing gets difficult.

Over my lifetime, I've had many opportunities to form a new perspective. My current way of working by doing one thing and then another and then another until a piece says it is finished is completely and radically different than my initial way of working which was carefully planned to the last detail. Back then, I couldn't begin to contemplate such a free form process and now I can no longer contemplate such a rigid one. Our experiences have a way of evolving us.

When my children were 3, 7, and 10, my husband was deathly ill. At one point, the medical system gave him seven weeks to live. In desperation, we sent him to a private clinic in the United States. At a cost of over $130,000 Canadian, they were able to help him and today he is alive, mostly healthy, and back to work.

In order to pay those expenses, we remortgaged our house. We are still paying off that mortgage years later. If Howard had died, his life insurance would have been his last gift to me, a gift of peace of mind, security, and choice. In order to survive, my children and I would NOT have had to move to a less expensive neighbourhood, change schools, adjust to daycare for them and to me working full time once I'd retrained.

Nor would they have had to deal with a new man in my life since statistics show that many women who are widowed young are forced to remarry quickly due to finances. I personally know two people who have had to make that choice and it was a very real possibility for me with no immediate means of supporting myself. My work from home business was a nice second income but not a self supporting one.

Today, if Howard died, that final gift would do exactly the same thing. We still have a mortgage that needs to be paid off. Our cars are older and need to be replaced soon. I'm currently unemployed with few self supporting prospects especially without retraining. We have a child in a private high school and one in university, both who live at home and have been told they can live here as long as they like. We have a married, adult child who lives ten hours away. It costs money to visit her. Even today, Howard's gift of life insurance would enable me to live a life of security and choice and it would allow me the space in which to grieve with as little stress and pressure as possible.

When someone questions the validity of life insurance or views it a selfish money maker - which is a VERY common viewpoint- I completely and utterly disagree with them. In fact, based on my experience, the lack of life insurance seems selfish. It creates such a hardship for those you love and leave behind. The funeral alone is expensive.

Throughout his illness, overshadowing the hope that Howard would get better was the fear that he would not. Our children were little and I was young and struggling to get my business going. The last thing I needed to cope with was such a significant loss followed by such massive upheavals. Had Howard died, I would been incredibly grateful for that last gift and if the positions were reversed, the same gift would have given Howard the ability to stay in our home, to hire a nanny and a housekeeper, to take an extended leave of absence from work to be with the children, and to take his time deciding if he wanted to remarry and who rather than quickly finding someone to look after his kids. My last gift to him would have been one of peace of mind, security, and choice.

Perhaps it depends on your perspective. Insurance of any kind is rather a hot button subject for me but especially life insurance having lived through that horrible time. Life insurance has less to do with the person who died and more to do with those who remain behind. Our experience taught us to purchase as much life insurance as we can afford and the appropriate amount of property and content insurance for what we own not selfishly but as self care. To me it is peace of mind insurance.

I started working when I was twelve years old and have worked long and hard for thirty five years to acquire the ingredients of my current lifestyle. I don't have another forty (working) years to do that again so replacing those ingredients in the event of a tragedy seems a pretty basic decision to me, as does leaving my loved ones the gift of choice.




OKAY - climbing off my soapbox now - back to textiles. Wednesday night I started outlining all the shapes with satin stitch and continued that yesterday. It felt like TREMENDOUS progress - the finish line is in sight. The satin stitch is narrow and tighter but not dense. Fabric still shows through. You can - sort of - see what I mean with the black on the outside edge of the dotted green above.




Before I could finish the outside line, I had to adjust a few shapes to make the transition between the second and third pieces work better. In the image above, the line through the blue is where the pieces have been cut apart. If you draw a mental line up through the dotted green at the top you can see that a dark chunk is all that would be remaining on the third section and it would have been trimmed and squared even smaller. Such a small, dark chunk wasn't much of a connecting point.

In the image below, I've continued the flow of the line into the right hand piece making sure that there was some of each of the three fabrics visible. When working with cartoons as I am with this piece, it's important to adjust lines and shapes to fit the enlarged size of the finished piece. This line works better - or at least I think it does.




Yesterday, Howard and I went out for lunch to an Indian restaurant. I've just learned that a huge amount of Indian food is gluten-free. Finding a new restaurant and actually having choices was amazing. I'd gone on Tuesday for lunch with a friend after Arts & Crafts club and was so excited about it that Howard wanted to go back. I imagine I'll eat there often from now on and I'm going to explore some Indian cook books. I love spicy and curried food so this is a good mix for me - perhaps not for my family though. Howard said he would go back "occasionally" - LOL.




After lunch, he rode his motorcycle out to work to help them resolve a major problem. I was pretty impressed. Not that he went; that's Howard. I was impressed that this was the first time they've called him in 2 1/2 weeks and only because it was an emergency.

I worked in the studio stitching the outlining on the inside of the dotted green with the same rayon thread from the circles. I like how the green is picking up on the other colors in the piece. After that, I stippled in the white. Now the areas on each side of the dotted green are condensed and the shapes are standing out even more. Each step adds to the overall look. It's becoming more crisp and complete. YES YES!




Last night, we went out for coffee with friends. Today, we're meandering through the day. Aryck is driving out to the camp to pick up Kyle and bring him home for the weekend. I'll fret the whole time he's gone. It's bad enough when one of them is driving on the highway but I find it so hard to have two of my children in a car. This is growing up - I can do it. Setting them free is so important and I love when they do things together. One day, they'll drive me.

I'm looking forward to some lazy, family days on the weekend. We'll take Kyle back on Sunday afternoon. He's working there for three weeks. On Monday, both Howard and Aryck are at work and life will be back to its usual routine. We're enjoying our holiday. Getting back to normal will be good too. Have a great weekend.

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful: a new restaurant - YES YES!