Projects

I’m stubborn. (Yeah, go ahead and laugh, Mom.) Especially when it came to projects. Whether it be for 4H, personal progress or school, I seemed to always have projects. Mom was creative; I was not. So invariably, I’d go to Mom for help for ideas. She was full of them. She would spout off idea after idea. I have this very unfortunate trait that I finally pinpointed later in life, but didn’t realize as a flaw in my thinking at the time. I tend to outwardly focus on the negative while keeping the positive internalized. (I am also a helpless optimist in other cases, but that doesn’t apply to Projects.) So while Mom would give me brilliant idea after brilliant idea, I would point out the flaws and holes in all of them. It wouldn’t be long before we would both be in tears as the clock ticked further and further past our bedtimes. By the end, though, I would end up with some fantastic project based off one of Mom’s ideas and combined with several others to fill in the gaps. While we both got more and more frustrated, we didn’t realize that my subconscious was churning all of the ideas together and building something that neither of us could have done alone. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I should have told Mom that all of her ideas had much good to them as well. I didn’t point out the good parts, only the flaws. Luckily, Mom’s patience and determination to help me always got us through the project, turning out amazingness every time. Thanks, Mom.

I remember several 4-H projects. There was a jumper, a hat, and a junk vest for Sewing. I remember muffins for Cooking. I remember a drawing of a rose on piano keys for Drawing. Let’s not even start on the countless record books that I never started until the night before they were due. For school I recall a science project about butterflies, documenting the life based on real-life experience.

I remember another using mini marshmallows in a quart jar to demonstrate what a vacuum does. We filled it about 1/3 full with colorful mini marshmallows and took it to one of Mom’s friends’ houses. She had some sort of contraption that sucked all the air out of jars for preservation purposes. We sucked it all out and recall being amazed at watching the marshmallows grow to huge sizes. They filled the entire jar! I remember wishing we could take the gadget to school with me so I could show everyone else how awesome that was. But I did get to take the jar to class and let everyone gasp in amazement as I took the lid off and let air in and the marshmallows all shrunk to their normal size. Then we ate all of the marshmallows. I also remember that’s when I learned how to spell the word ‘vacuum.’

I remember crocheting a pillow to show the construction of an assigned element. I don’t remember the specific element, but I do remember it being a pink and yellow circular pillow with various colored circles to show the number of electrons, neurons and protons. I remember that being on display for weeks on the shelf above the coat racks outside of my classroom door. I remember feeling so proud and yet so embarrassed at the same time. What 6th grader crochets? But then again, I was a 6th grader that could crochet. I was awesome.