Crafty Is As Crafty Does

I'm the daughter of an immensely talented and creative woman. My mom can make just about anything. She quilts. She knits. She has reupholstered furniture and stenciled on walls. She creates amazing window treatments and whipped up a curtain for her sliding glass door the day before my wedding. She's made dolls, kids toys, baby clothes, Halloween costumes. She hoards buttons and fabric. She has more pairs of scissors than I have shoes. As the room mom when I was young, she was the one who baked cupcakes that looked like turkeys for Thanksgiving; as troop leader when I was a Girl Scout, she came up with the best crafts, swaps and t-shirt decorating contests. She bleeds Modge Podge.

You'd think with all that talent in one person, I would have inherited some of her skill. Instead, it appears the glue-gun gene skips a generation, because I don't have a crafty bone in my body. What's worse, I don't even like crafts. Glitter makes me shudder and all I see when I look at construction paper is a pile of bits and pieces that will need to be vacuumed off the rug. There isn't a pom pom or a pipe cleaner in the house, and I dread the day when one of my kids comes home with a necklace for me made out of yarn and macaroni.

This is not to say that I'm not creative. I take interesting and funny photographs and I can make up a song about anything at the drop of a hat. Once, on a walk, my son dashed into some bushes, emerging with two sticks, and pine cone croquet was born. I've dabbled in scrapbooking, but as my pages always leave me feeling dissatisfied, I've turned to blogging. I have four blogs and on them I post pictures, funny stories and commentary, without worrying about how much my handwriting resembles chicken scratch.

One day, before my son turned two, we went to AC Moore in search of picture frames, and as we wandered through the store, I became aware of another mother and her two daughters. The girls were chattering and loading up their cart with pom poms and paint brushes, beads and ribbons. They were so enthusiastic, when they ended up in front of me at the checkout, I asked what they planned to do with all their stuff. As they told me about all the projects they were going to do, the mother beamed at me and said, "I just love doing crafts with my girls, don't you?" I smiled weakly and mumbled something about being allergic to glue.

Back at home, a vague disquiet stole over me and I wondered if my aversion to all things crafty was warping my son. Determined to make something with him, I settled on maracas, and proceeded to seal uncooked pasta between two disposable plates. He loved it, but it lasted exactly two minutes, because I stupidly used styrofoam plates, which cracked, spilling dried noodles all over my floor.

Then, in a fit of insanity, I told my sister-in-law that finger paints would make a good second birthday gift for my son. He's almost three now, and they're in a basket on a high shelf. Every time I see the box, I toy with the idea of getting them out, and then I come to my senses and walk away. Paint? And my energetic son? In my house? I think not.

My one success in the arts and crafts department is the bedtime book I made soon after my daughter was born. She was tiny and constantly hungry, and my son chose that time to become difficult about going to sleep. I wrote a short story about his bedtime routine, illustrated it with pictures of him doing the steps and appropriate stickers...and then fastened it all together with staples. Despite my lack of skills at book binding, he loved his personalized story and it made bedtime run much smoother.

I've come to the conclusion that there are two types of people on this earth--those who make puppets out of mismatched socks, and those who throw the mateless socks in the trash and go to Target to buy new ones. I'm definitely the latter. I can't force myself to like crafts anymore than I can force my kids to eat broccoli. What good does it do them anyway if I'm gritting my teeth over spilled glue and uncapped markers and mentally counting down the minutes until it's time to do something else? If they want to make something, we can make dinner together, and they can always make sock puppets at my mom's house. I wonder if they can finger paint over there too?