Such a gift: 24 years with WeatherGrrrl

One of Sue's cool art books
One of Sue’s cool art books

…a commodity has value and a gift does not. A gift has worth. – Lewis Hyde

Tomorrow (24 June) marks the 24th anniversary of our marriage!

There are so many things I’m grateful for, and no way to enumerate them or document them here, so I’ll settle for an example.

Among her many “strangely inventive” artistic talents, Sue makes books. Wonderful, handmade books, where she cuts and folds all the paper, sews together the signatures, builds the cover, and glues it all together. Some of these are displayed in galleries, while others (such as the one pictured here) are notebooks or journals filled with blank pages inviting us to share our thoughts in word or sketch.

For the past several years, Sue has made such journals as high school graduation gifts for our and, more substantially, Tom’s friends in that year’s graduating class. As he moves on to college, the numbers are beginning to contract, but over the years she’s made many dozens of these books, often for people we didn’t actually know terribly well. That’s a lot of work, constructing by hand an object whose future is far from certain. She is, after all, making blank books, in an age where the future of books is at best unclear, an age where most are far more likely to send a text message or post on a blog [I’M LOOKING AT ME!] than to write a letter or keep a journal on paper.

Thus these are, in the true sense that Hyde means in the opening quote, gifts. As handcrafted pieces of art, they have clear worth, but their value (and how they are valued by the recipients) is quite uncertain.

Yet she keeps making them. In a flurry of activity every May between the end of the University school year and the high school graduation she cuts and folds and glues and frets. She picks out different papers to use as covers, and has Tom give her feedback on which covers would make the most sense for which graduate. She increases the worth of the world (if not its value) through these gifts, each of which is in fact a multiple gift. It is obviously a gift to the graduate, but this effort is also a gift to our son, and a thank-you to the families of these students who have been important to him.

And, to the point of all this, these are also a gift to me. For while each of these books is made by her and is officially a gift from Thomas, her work enriches us all and the glow it casts as it goes out into the world reflects back on our whole family even if it was her hands that did all the sewing.

So I say “Thank You”, for this and the untold gifts large and small that she has shared with me. It has been a truly splendid 24 years together, and I look forward to many more decades to come!

With all my love,

     – Nic

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I love my cool family!

It's a shame they don't get along :-)
It's a shame they don't get along :-)

Welcome to Valentine’s Day, that annoyingly commercialized annual reminder that we’re actually supposed to care about the special people in our life. As Cory nicely put it

Proving you really care about someone is an achievement that takes effort everyday. Chocolate and flowers on a single day won’t do.

All that said, I figured it wouldn’t be amiss to let my family know how fabulous they are, a non-commercial sort of way of course :-).

The photo up top is from 9 years ago while we were living in the UK during our first sabbatical; Tom was 7 at the time, and Susan hadn’t yet cut off most of her hair. The strip below is from our second UK sabbatical 7 years later; now he’s taller than her and looking suspiciously like a young man instead of a little boy. Both give a sense of how fun it is to live with these two — there’s no question that I’m a lucky, lucky man.

It's a shame they don't get along (7 years later)
It's a shame they don't get along (7 years later)

It was interesting to see how few photos I have of the two of them together outside of the sabbaticals. Those two years are documented in excruciating detail, while our day-to-day here in Morris is much more sparsely recorded. There are moments, like when Tom’s on stage, where I take a billion photos, but I end up with very few photos of the two of them together.

I think this helps illustrate the value of these years we’ve had away from home. There’s something about stepping out of your “normal” life, leaving most of your stuff behind, and making a life (even if for just a year) in a new place. It shaves off a lot of the distractions and, for us at least, meant we spent more and different time together. Some of that is in the form of being tourists together (which is where these photos come from), but it’s also in the form of walking together because we didn’t own a car, and being together because the apartment was too small for us to easily be apart.

(And I realize that having this sort of opportunity just oozes privilege; most people don’t have the flexibility or resources to do this sort of thing once, let alone twice. I’m lucky in many, many ways.)

Happy Valentine’s Day to Sue and Tom!

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