Aging Eyes and Baby Quilts

These days, the main quilting that I do is creating baby quilts, which I love because I can complete a small project.  My larger quilts sit waiting for me.  This morning, my fingers are sore from doing some intense quilting yesterday.  If I'm creating a baby quilt for a specific pregnant woman, the project comes to a point when it must be done.

I've been in some denial about my eyes.  I've only just started putting on reading glasses when doing transcript evaluation, but I've told myself that it's because the transcripts were fuzzy or had small print--or both.  When I use my reading glasses at night, I tell myself it's because my eyes are tired.

They aren't even my glasses.  I'm borrowing my spouse's.

Yesterday, I was having trouble threading my needle, and I borrowed his glasses.  I got the thread through the eye on my first try.

Perhaps it's time to stop denying my need for reading glasses.  Am I in denial about the aging process?  Perhaps a bit.  But part of why I resist reading glasses is rooted in the same reason why I resist a smart phone:  I don't want to have to cart around so much stuff.

I like my younger self, with a credit card and a lipstick in her pocket, and she was ready to go anywhere.

There are many reasons why I chose not to have children; part of that decision has similar roots.  I didn't want to be weighed down in that way.

Of course, my younger self would be horrified at the ways the world weighs us down, even if we travel through it without children, without reading glasses, without a smart phone.  We accumulate baggage.

It's interesting to be quilting on Mother's Day week-end, thinking about aging and the doors that are closing.  It's interesting to think about choice.  I've always assumed that I had plenty of choices, plenty of time.

It's harder to keep thinking that way. 

But instead of mourning, let me use this awareness as a spur.  I won't be here forever, and time grows ever shorter.  What is my life's important work still left to be done?