Trick or Treat

One of my girls had a challenge this year finding a pre-made Halloween costume that she liked and that would fit her. I offered to make her a costume from either a pattern or of her design. She decided she wanted to be an orange and black Halloween Princess. I took her to the fabric store and purchased fabrics of her choice - I made several suggestions but in the end we picked what she wanted.

At home, we sketched on a piece of paper what the finished outfit would look like and she agreed that the drawing represented what she wanted. I felt like a contestant on the tv show Project Runway - draping and pinning and cutting and sewing together a creation of original design. At each step I would ask her to try on our in-progress outfit and get her to validate that we were still on track. Finally, after a week, the outfit was complete. We still have to do a slight adjustment on the fitting, but all in all, what was created matched our original drawing.

In doing this, I realized that none of my girls would be able to do what I just did. When I went to school, home economics was a course we were required to take and that apparently no longer exists in our school system. We are on the edge of a generation who will lose a basic set of domestic skills unless we make the conscious effort to pass these skills in the time honoured tradition of parent to child. So now I add, in addition to all the projects I want to address, a new project to ensure my children are given the gift that was given to me of working with a needle and thread. It also speaks to the larger question of how many of us have skills that we either have, or have not, shared with our children. The legacy we leave is as much about what they wish to learn as it is about what we wish for them to learn. It's got me thinking, that's for sure.