yep i,m sat in the middle - the eldest of the familly too young to be the elder, too old to have a bright future, (especially if they have left me their parental genes) but also too young to sit in a chair and wait for god - so she will have to come and find me - because however short or long that time is i intend to fill it and help make that brighter future because we might not realise it but some-one helped make tha brighter futures we looked forward too, they dont just tap us on the shoulder and invite us to step in.
Last night i was digging through cupboards and found a bag with sewing stuff in, and in the bag was a piece of edging that had been so intricately made i marvelled at the eyesight and focus it must have taken to create it - i am fairly sure it would have been my gran who did it, she took in sewing to earn money while looking after her mum prevented her from doing outside work, and i remember her making edgings for plain white pillowcases i still own one of those, but this was even more intricate.
She taught me to hem and darn and sew buttons and maybe that wasnt directly a bright future but it has come in useful all the same- and i am the go too person for sewing on kids badges etc but they dont get away with not doing some themselves so they learn too.
So I was just writing to some-one else before i read this post, about that find, and talking about the textile mills where that side of the familly were employed mainly, and my gran working in one when she was 11, and i was joking about my genes being very confusing which they are - but looking at the people who were actually around me when i was young, My great Aunt Liily, the rebel, suffergette supporter and political activist then teacher, My other great aunt Annie, the mill worker who got Tb and ended up not dying from it like so many others, but working in the safer space of the draftsmens office designing textiles, and that TB treatment, being a trigger for my mums love of countryside and determination to live there, and my gran the carer and my mum the teacher who found her career was the way to do just that but was helped to get to that level my Lilly the rebel turned teacher.
And there is a bit of all of them in me - i work in design, i love textiles, (i,m a fabric hoarder) I,ve always been the carer starting from being my grans at the age of 16,going into nursing etc etc -
the rebel, well yes that too and political activist in my time ( and physically the nearest resemblance too any of that side is with her) but maybe not enough rebelling,and now maybe the time for that to be stronger has come perhaps not waiting for god is a kind of rebellion - and using the care.design. teacher parts of all those influences in the voluntary stuff i do is a kind of activism by trying to help put right something that is very wrong.
If we want that bright future for our famillies then we can still be a part of shaping that future in some way, for me that is by striving to improve the futures of children that are not mine, and the state of the planet they and mine will all be left with.
Anything you do at all to meet that goal can help - if you pick up some plastic rubbish, just one piece is one less hazard for the ocean.
But we all have different passions, maybe things that make us feel angry or fantastic but it is still a passion.
If you pass on something you have learned, a skill, even something you see as a hobby, then that is one more thing they have learned.
Plant something with them and you are teaching them how to feed themselves in an uncertain future that might be what they most need to do,
and talk too them, as one day they will recall your storys and maybe those storys will influence how they react to a situation they find themselves in -it could help them to stop bad history repeating or to to re create good history.
You may never see them use it, but that doesnt mean they wont, and like that unfinished bit of edging, it can be left in a cupboard for years before some-one realises its worth, and when they do starts to consider, as i have, the meaning of that influence, -
I dont know how she did it but now i want to know so i can finish it and put it to some use - so she is still teaching me, and ok it wont save the world, but it will make it prettier.
By doing the things you do and maybe adding some more too them, you wont have spent your time waiting for God in a chair, but have filled it with their futures.- Maybe thats my rebellious side as well, as i said at the start i am not waiting for god she will have to come and find me.