Quilting to Stay Sane

It's not surprising that this flat spot at the top of our lawn is now sporting a healthy crop of fungi. We rushed out fairly early this morning to get in a walk at Spring Lake before the rain started again. In our haste to beat the rain we forgot that Spring Lake would be closed due to flooding. We can usually walk in, but it must have been particularly bad after this storm because even the pedestrian entrances were closed. There were people walking across the dam but we couldn't find a place to park and just carried on to Trail house for coffee and a scone. We ran into a friend there who told us about a good place to walk that we didn't know about so we'll check that out soon. She went out to her car to get her bag of special dog treats and gave some to Spike. 

We found Dana and Jim and Blake in our house when we got back and spent a pleasant time discussing various things including who is doing what for Thanksgiving. There have been several stories on the radio and in the paper about what to do if you are spending Thanksgiving with people on the other side of the 'Great Political Divide'. I'm very grateful that that is not an issue we will have to deal with.

When they left I retreated to my workspace wondering why it is I get so obsessed by something I never would have considered becoming so consuming. And lo and behold, there was a discussion on The New Yorker Radio Hour between David Remnick and lawyer Ayelet Waldman,  who is married to writer Michael Chabon. They still live in a Craftsman house around the corner from our former home on Magnolia Street. She is also a writer, but the subject of their conversation was how both of them, but particularly she gets away from the nerve wracking anxiety caused by the current news. They make quilts! She described the process of getting so engrossed in it that she found it very calming.

She was not only describing exactly what happens to me, but she was curious enough about it that she interviewed neurologists and others to try and understand why it works. The relatively simple explanation is that it is bilateral. We use both hands to do it but more importantly, we use both sides of the brain...the creative, artistic right brain joins with the technical left brain to create something tangible and useful and this collaboration is apparently very calming. 

Furthermore, when doing this kind of work, the brain joins 'the default mode brain network'. There was a more elaborate definition for this, but essentially I took it to mean daydreaming or, as the British might say, 'being miles away'. 

I couldn't help wondering how she managed to 'get up in the morning and quilt for ten hours a day., eat dinner, quilt some more and go to bed'.
I know that she has written about being a 'bad mother' and that Michael took over the child care duties so that she could devote her time to her career. Quilting for that many hours a day seems a bit self indulgent but a lot of what she said about it rang true.

The other question neither of them answered is, 'what do you do with all those quilts once you have made them?'