The Point

I was, in my early days, known to craft back when Girl Scouts ruled the earth and long before craft was a verb. Recently though, I've taken up needlepointing to save my hollow soul from utter self-destruction. At first glance, you might see me sitting in the park and think, "How 2002-post-wave-feminist-nod-to-gentler-times-y." But it's more than that. Beyond my Little House desire to "Take Back the Yarn" and channel my underutilized creativity healthily, needlepointing is also taking my fragile sanity and channeling it into attractive throw pillows.

When my son was about two years old, my Mom Friends all had a second babies. I had tried and tried to have a second child to no avail, and still deeply distraught, found it challenging to hang out with friends who'd had no trouble conceiving again, especially with all the complaining they did (and still do) about how overwhelming it is to raise two kids. On most days I tucked my envy up my sleeve and enjoyed the meaty little cherubs almost as if they were my own. Every precious waddle into my arms or sticky kiss on my cheek reminding me of what I was missing but I soldiered on, alternating between graceful acceptance and whiny self-pity. My son, off playing happily and autonomously with his friends (the older siblings), no longer needed me for the most part. My work, for this phase at lease, was done.

I was now knee deep in the bench-sitter phase. I actually got to sit on the benches at playgrounds, which I and so many other new parents had only dreamt about when our children were just walking and needed us near. I wasn't one of the helicopter-parenting contingents, but even the laziest caregiver has to stay on her feet for the months or years after an intrepid toddler learns to climb and before he learns to fall. Back then, benches were those things that held our diaper bags. We glanced at them longingly from behind the swing set or seesaw, but sit on them? No chance. We were crouching mothers, swaying standers, forever at the ready, always on the move.

Now, I was sitting often. Conversations started between my froend and me only to be inevitably interrupted by youth's infinite caprices and then up my friend would go. Off to push a swing or referee a fight, she or he could be gone anywhere from 20 seconds to four minutes depending on how long the child wanted to play catch or slide down the fireman's pole. Sometimes our conversations continued over great distances like two hard-of-hearing great-aunts shouting across the great sandbox divide. More often than not, I got my lazy ass off the bench and went and stood next to my friend with my hands in my pockets while he pushed his younger son on the squeaky swing.

About half the time I didn't tag along, like when there were sobs to be consoled or disciplinary actions to be handed out. It's not really appropriate nor is it, quite frankly, easy to maintain a chat about a hilarious piece on The Onion's site while simultaneously counting down a time-out laced with stern looks of disapproval. When toilet training was involved, my alone time on the bench stretched out before me like those endless, wordless days, backpacking through Europe, when my travel companion managed to find a new boyfriend, no matter what country we were in, and take off with him, leaving me alone.

I tried thinking. And I should have been able to enjoy the quiet solace of dappled sunlight on wood chips but all I could think about, while surrounded by strollers, was of all the babies I wasn't having. I needed a distraction. I started keeping a rolled up New Yorker magazine in my back pocket. I kept it in my car and even brought it to the playground when it was just me and my son, because chances were pretty good that he might make a friend, and then, I would be abandoned again.

Reading was good but also proved challenging in it's own way. I would arrive at the park, hone in on my bench and my friend would take off. No prob. I would take out my trusty New Yorker and, invariably, get engrossed in some saga, totally sucked in to that piece about the crusty container ship captain and how his vessel was taken by rogue pirates in murky international waters and then he was tied up and knew he was gonna get it. The pirate captain demanded he give up his wedding band and the crusty captain said, "No!" which the pirate captain sort of respected him for and then, all of a sudden, my son was standing before me with his crusty nose needing wiping and now it's snack time and does anyone have an extra wipe? I tried to go back and forth between the fidgity sociopathic pirates and handing out fig newtons to grubby kids only so many times before losing the thread of the story and the will to finish. Time and again this happened, so I gave up.

I thought of knitting, briefly. Knitting is, in case you didn't know, very in. In fact, it was so hugely in for a while that it might even be passe at this point. History may prove knitting to be to the oughts what macrame was to the seventies. But who am I to care what's in when I'm just trying to save my own sanity. I tried knitting and I loved it, I really did. Knitted on the subway, knitted in meetings, knitted my little heart out. But when I got to the sleeves I froze. Sleeves and necks involved counting and dropping and decoding patterns and ripping out mistakes, and I just. Couldn't. Do it. I would need absolute silence and uninterrupted control over my environment in order to focus and concentrate and count, and the Turtleback Zoo was not going to give that to me. Nor was his T-ball clinic or the town pool. So much for knitting.

Needlepointing seemed the logical choice. There's no counting or decoding involved. It's paint by numbers for the craft-challenged. I can be needlepointing away on the bleachers while my son's getting a lecture from the coach and when it's his turn at bat, I can stop, lift my eyes and be fully invested in the game. When things get dreary again, I can just go right back to where I left off. No brain necessary.

I took to it like bees to honey.

I found a canvas at a rummage sale for eight bucks and the yarn for another seven. It rolls up and fits in my purse and never gets bigger. It's with me where ever I go. Long lines at the post office? No prob. Inept cashier at the supermarket? Not an issue. Paralyzing shyness at a PTA, 12 Step or Divorced Ladies Peer Group meeting? I can handle it. My needlepoint is my friend, my go-to-gal when I'm seized by a moment of such irrefutable discomfort that my only other option is to throw myself onto the nearest plastic fork and hope for a swift disembowelment. Of course it's a crutch, I admit it. But it's better than whipping out a crack pipe, or keeping a flask in my glove compartment. I know I should be meditating or breathing deeply, but jeeze, I can only do so much to hold it together.

So I needlepoint. And now, when my friends disappear to attend to their younger kids, I relish the chance to take a little break, nestle into my bench and enjoy my new hobby. It's dorky. It's queer. But it's saving me from my suffering these days and I'm slowly gaining peace, acceptance and some nifty new pillows for the sunroom.