Macramé and Scrapbooking: Art or Madness?
My mother was a macramé junky. My first memories of it take me back to sitting on the family room couch—a brown sectional, decorated with homemade turquoise dishtowel, throw pillows and an orange afghan—where I would watch my mother create knotted thingies with interestingly colored ropes and wooden beads. Hanging from hooks around the room were many similar, knotty objects, holding enormous hair-like plants. Underneath the coveted swag light—perhaps providing the best mood for tying knots—my mother would take an occasional break for a sip of Tab—her favorite saccharine-sweetened carbonated beverage. On sunny days the ritual would take place outside where my cleavage-hoop-bikini donned mom, coated in baby oil, would lie for hours on a sunbathing bed of aluminum foil and tie away! Day after day during my childhood, I either chased down cars in the street on my Big Wheel unsupervised, or watched that woman make her creations hoping I would one day understand the madness of her obsession.
Umpteen years later, my mom hesitantly replaced her macramé thingies with several extremely polished brass thingies. Meanwhile, I was far away from home and traded in my professional shoes for stay-at-home mommy and freelancer flip-flops. Motherhood had thrown me into a world of mom-specific social groups, with an introduction to a plethora of new, perfect-for-every-mom hobbies such as, stamping and the most popular hobby of choice: Scrapbooking. I quickly learned that in order to fit in at this new school, I needed to take a break from my writing, drawing, hiking, photography and family time, and try what others called, “A real hobby.” After being invited to dozens of acquaintance-hosted scrapbooking parties and repeatedly RSVPing, “No, thank you,” I had decided to set my intuition aside and accept an invitation.
I had prepared myself for my very first scrapbook-themed party by gathering the necessary number of special photographs and items I was told to bring for the purpose of creating a sample page of family memories. My irreplaceable treasures in hand, I fashionably arrived five minutes late. Assuming I would not have missed a thing, I took my time and dropped my daughter off at the designated child care room. Then I made my way to the scrapbooking room where I witnessed a horrific display of absolute chaos. I could barely tell, but there were tables set up everywhere. Masses of moms, resembling worker ants, were frantically cutting, folding and pasting their priceless memories onto gaudy cardstock complete with matching binders. I paused for a second, and wondered if I was in the middle of a nightmare where moms my age were partaking in an underground ritual which resembled the macramé madness of my childhood. When I realized my friend, the hostess of the party, was there and had actually asked me to pay an entrance fee, I waited for her to tell me I was being Punk’d. I could not have been that lucky! I paid my non-refundable fee and found an open chair where I sat and observed.
Scrapbooking Junkies: Beware of Salsa, Poor Posture and Wide Thighs
For hours, women compared stencils, ticket stubs and overly priced photo albums while working their hands as though they lived in a world where sitting was an exercise and carpel tunnel never existed. The routine appeared meaningless enough to some participants that they could have had their eyes closed. They took breaks from the activity to sip Diet Pepsi or chomp chips with salsa—which in and of itself, made me nervous knowing how much money and memories could have been stained by one drop of salsa. My breaking point had finally occurred when I overheard one woman proudly exclaim that her family’s vacations had been chosen based on which activities provided the best scrapbook fodder. Others laughed and nodded in agreement. With that I escaped to the childcare room, picked up my daughter and ran for the door with my priceless photos intact.
While the scrapbooking party haunted me for a few years, it had made me better equipped in social settings to steer clear from the subject of hobbies when I would first meet a woman. Within five minutes of an introduction I had learned to look out for token phrases from true scrapbooking addicts, such as, “Do you scrapbook?” or “Boy, I sure love scrapbooking!” Then I would slowly walk backward to appear busy or late for a doctor appointment, all in an effort to avoid the pressure or an invitation to be guilted into paging through another family’s memory book.
A Little, Yet Enough to Remember
Not certain if my humor had translated into calloused sarcasm, I further explained to the moms that I had turned out fine despite the fact my mother had never made a single scrapbook detailing every waking monotonous minute of my life. And regardless of the peer pressure and examples of gorgeous baby books thrown at the moms’ faces, they would not need to prove their love for their children based on how expensively they preserved their children’s memories. I had shared with the moms what my mom had given me—one weathered, pleather-bound, jam-packed photo album—free of fluffy page themes and decorations—yet filled with cherished pictures taken during the first half of my life. The book had most likely been dirt cheap and thrown together over time, but it was something I had grown to treasure and respect each passing year. None of the photos had been staged, corrected or cropped, instead they randomly captured fond memories which reminded me of the best parts of my childhood—family, friends, pets, birthdays, holidays past, and of course, those macramé thingies hanging from the ceiling.
