Following My Bliss

It was a very long night tonight.  My Angel has dance lessons on Thursday afternoons from 4pm to 6:30pm.  No, that isn’t what makes it long.  I enjoy the time I get to spend with either a book or talking to the other moms who are also waiting for their girls.  Thursdays are actually a highlight of my week.  My lovely Angel prepares herself with great care, sits to have her long hair pulled up in a bun of whatever form I feel like making at the time, and walks a bit taller.  I love seeing the transformation that takes place in her young self as she mentally prepares herself for dance.  While I was a little hesitant about such a long stretch of lesson time, she has risen to the task with a grace, poise, and focus that makes me smile.  So. No, the two and a half hours at the dance studio are not what made my evening so long.

It was the traffic coming home.  While it only takes us 15 minutes to get to the studio from our house, tonight it took a whole hour to get home.   We had stopped at a mom & pop chinese place that is next to the studio to pick up noodles for dinner and headed home from there.  It was with dread that I saw that our off ramp was clogged.  I could have passed it and taken the next one over, but I was an optimist tonight…and dead wrong.  Slowly, we crawled home from there.

Luckily, I had three Category 30 orders waiting to be made at my workbench at home.  Sitting in that traffic, my mind kept going to the designs I was to make when I got home.  The longer our trek became, the more my head escaped to where it really wanted to be.   I thought about how the silver would behave in my hands as I worked it into the requested shapes.  Seeing the steps in my head, I allowed myself to sit back and muse about something that I would be doing very, very soon.

Finally arriving home, my Angel quickly changed, visited with our engineer, ate her noodles, and headed to bed.   Feeling pretty wrung out from our long journey through thick traffic, I ate quietly and headed upstairs to my workbench.  FINALLY!!!  Honestly, my mind and body were weary at this point.  While I had used it as a means to escape during our stau, I was ready to just call it a night and crawl into bed.  However, knowing that morning flies by at the speed of light in our house, I knew that I really had to complete the orders tonight.

Turning on my work lamp, I found myself going through the ritualistic motions of laying out my tools.   The weariness began to disappear and was replaced by peace…a very simple feeling that all was well.  Pulling out paper and a marker with the same size tip as the size of the silver wire I was to use, I made a rough sketch of the design I was to create.   Touching it up here and there, my mind worked through the motions that the silver would have to go through to create it.

You see, silver wire has to be respected.   It has a mind of its own.  While care must be taken, it is not for the cowardly.  Precise motions are required to make a beautiful piece.  While there can be an occasional “second chance,” it won’t have the pure, free form shape of something that was achieved the first time around.  While it can be supple and fluid in the hands, with too much handling it will break.  That is actually one of the things that I love about working with it.  Respectful but firm…

Taking out the coil of 16 gauge 99.2% pure silver, my hands did their thing.  Tools, wire, and hands can create beautiful things if they work together.   Slowly, carefully, and precisely, the naked wire took its form.  You see, for me, there is nothing I love more in this world than creating something out of raw materials.  My good friends would chuckle and say that it is my addition.  Really…it is my Bliss.  There is a high, of sorts, that comes with creating that I love.  My engineer learned many years ago that if things were stressful, all he needed to do was recommend that I make something….and life would be good.

So, tonight, after a long day and a long commute home, it was with anticipation that I came home….and followed my Bliss.