Giving, Forgiving, Mending

Learning old skills in midlife

I’m trying to learn how to mend things.

A fleece blanket with a tiger on it that Santa brought me in 1976. A favorite soft grey sweater that the moths nibbled on. The cracks in the bathroom wall.

I’m not very good at it. I’m impatient, reluctant to practice the needed skills, and prone to distraction. I procrastinate. I avert my eyes from the cracks, and stuff the sweater and blanket in a trunk, out of sight. But I keep thinking about these projects, and beating myself up for not completing them.

At that long ago Christmas, I remember asking my Mom and Dad is the blanket just for me, really? I was stunned. I didn’t have to share it, and it wasn’t a toy. This was the first time Santa saw me as worthy of having a nice thing, like a grown-up. I was eight years old.

Despite regular washing, the fleece probably carries the DNA of every cat I’ve ever had, as they are drawn to the blanket’s furry, warm surface. I too like the feel of the softness on my face when I curl up underneath it for a cat nap.

Now it’s falling apart at one end, pulling apart from decades of use. I take a darning needle and weave in fibers, warp and weft; a new foundation for the old fleece to cling to. Then the blanket begins to unravel in a new spot. I know throwing it away would be easier, but I can’t bring myself to do that.

I also think about relationships which have evolved, or frayed; what do I do about that friend who stopped communicating with me when I said I was feeling so low, or an acquaintance who I like, and see regularly, whose politics differ from mine, more and more?

Mending is a commitment to transformation, moving forward, and accepting the nature of all things—change and imperfection—but part of me would rather have the exact same original thing, unchanged, unsullied, be it a tiger blanket or a friendship.

I box up my feelings of sadness and friction, and ruminate. Maybe I’m being too judgmental. Is it my fault or her fault? Why do I have to do the mending? I coulda, shoulda said or done that other thing. Do I try to mend the relationship, or myself?

I always say procrastination is a way of avoiding the feelings connected to a task, more than the activity itself. I don’t like change. I don’t like being hurt by people’s actions, or lack. And so I try to hold everything in place by ignoring and refusing, while the seasons change, over and over.

I can see my first step towards a new story; make decisions. Yes, I’ll fix the blanket, again. The sweater might go to the donation bin. I’ll continue to ignore the bathroom wall. And I’ll mourn for the friendship that’s ended, or maybe never was, and work to give the benefit of the doubt to people in my orbit who think differently than I do.

I’m trying to learn how to mend things. I’m not very good at it—yet.