Sunday.  (It was.)

Yesterday was my mother’s birthday, a day of celebration and a day that signals my own birthday is a week away. A few months ago, I was aware of the coming birthday. I remember points at which I wondered how much I could change my life, my current mindset, my frightening weight gain, in two months, in six weeks, in four. I remember the day a friend texted me and said, “Your birthday is a month from today,” and I was shocked to realize I’d been so busy that I hadn’t even taken note of the day–and equally shocked that someone else had.

And then, suddenly, as June hit, a month in which I am often philosophical and tangentially aware of the passing days, a month of self reflection, I got caught up in the pace of school being out, of work being so busy, of balancing my time and the boys and camps and torn up shoes and skateboards needing new deck tape, and on and on and on. The weeks have dwindled to only one, less than on, and my history of making this a special pre-birthday month has fallen apart.

Even so, over the last few weeks, I have been working on completing the top of the ’42′ quilt. Mostly, that means I’ve had it on the design wall and worked on it over the weekends. I can’t even count how many weeks this year have been weeks in which I haven’t sat at the sewing machine at all. But I didn’t lose sight of the ’42.’ With the exception of one final patch I want to applique in place, I finished the top yesterday. The final patch is a symbolic ’42,’ a last-minute addition, but one I am glad will mark the final stitches, by hand, on the top.

This morning, I sat and finished the Elm Creek book I’ve been reading, The Wedding Quilt. The ending caught me by surprise. A wedding, yes. But it made me sad. This was a book that was hard to read because so many of the friends we’ve come to know in the Elm Creek series have passed on in the years between this book and the one before. I cried my way through the ending, sad about these ‘characters’ who are now gone, sad somehow in reading the words of hope tied up in the wedding itself, and sad, at the same time, about this coming week–the sense that a year has come and gone so quickly. There is much wrapped up in my thoughts on the fleeting year that was, so much shock at what I see when I look at myself right now.  I wish I had time to sort it all out, to wrap my head around things and the year, and to take stock of what right now really is. That’s part of what this week is about for me, and I look ahead at the coming days and know it won’t happen that way.

But there will be a ’42′ finished in the next few weeks. And already I’ve started thinking about ’43′ and letting my mind play over what might work, what might be the right project to live with over this next year of journey.

(By the way, the previous Elm Creek title got me really enthused about and intrigued by Hawaii-style applique. I highly recommend the whole series.)

Just down the road…

So, today… I headed to camp… and I got lost. It felt pretty apropos at this point. My innate sense of direction has seemingly disappeared. The details made my Facebook status for the day:

Got lost on the way to camp… as I rant, the 8-yr old says… “It’s okay. I bet other people didn’t know how to get there either.” Then he adds, “I bet other people also grabbed Squish the Ameoba instead of directions, too.” (Grabbed a graphic novel on the way out instead of the directions!)

Yep!