a few years ago
during a holiday visit with Kip’s aunt and grandmother
i offhandedly stated (while looking at the various projects and things around the room)
that, as a person who sews, i should have probably gotten into embroidery and cross-stitching
a long long time ago,
but i’d never even tried.
and there was a flurry of limbs, fabrics, and plastic bags
and out popped a cute little cross-stitch kit,
complete with thread, tiny beads, directions, and two extra pairs of small scissors, just in case.

and that started me on a new fabric arts journey
cross-stitch gave way to small embroidery projects,
which gave way to large embroidery projects,
still within kits
(bought by my gifts-as-love-language spouse for nearly every gift-giving occasion)
and i started to memorize the stitch names
experiment a little bit with colors and paths and techniques

and then there was a global pandemic
and everyone needed to stay at home
and everyone needed to find something to do while they were staying at home
and a ton of people got into the fiber arts

and i got…
contrary.

i knew it would happen.
i could feel it in my bones.
as more and more people started falling in love with this art i’d been falling for,
i could feel myself protective of it,
i could feel myself resistant to posting about it,
for fear folks might think i just got into it for lack of something better to do.
rather than be joyous about more and more people seeing the benefit of this older art,
i just got petty

and i tried and tried and tried to tell myself not to,
and i tried and tried and tried to enjoy folks who found it as a life-saver during this global trauma,
but i just
couldn’t.

but i also knew i’d come back
i knew it wouldn’t last
(my distain for newbies,
my silly gatekeeping),
so i simply stopped my project
and began to enjoy different arts,
i poem-ed
and painted
and film-edited,
and i did not share any opinions online
because there’s enough negativity on there [here] to last several billion lifetimes,
and because i knew it would fade
and i would be left with an even stronger community,
or simply with even more people’s projects to look at
while bored online

and of course, i did
(and with an even freer sense to experiment a little
when following the directions felt stale)
and i love looking at people’s projects from the depths of the pandemic,
and i now know this fact about myself even better:
i will be contrary at first,
but i won’t try to keep that gate closed
for very long.