Arts and Crafts - How Making Crafts Helped

The year is 1991. She has moved from a small town to a large city where she awaits a double lung transplant due to Cystic Fibrosis. The young girl is 12 years old but her spirits are high. To state the obvious, she's scared. But she knows her choices are limited and this is what she needs to do. Besides being scared for obvious medical reasons, she's scared of being in a new city. She comes from a small town where everyone knows everyone and one usually bumps into about six or seven friends at the local grocery store. Now, she's been uprooted from the life she knew to a new life in a big metropolis. Time moves slow. She and her family are anxiously waiting for the call in which the transplant team will say it's time for her transplant. But wait is basically all she can do. Her mom decides that it's time to make a few crafts. A time for her and her daughter to spend time together. How about decorate the new apartment with their own creations? Sure, most people would buy pictures and such to hang on the wall. But they decided to put together puzzles, paste them, and hang them on the wall. Their own special touch to a new, strange place. Sure, she and her mom have always made crafts whether it be dough ornaments, or painting wooden ornaments to hang on the Christmas tree. But these crafts were special. They meant something different. Her defining moment in crafting came in the Christmas of 1991. She and her mom had went to buy some more crafts to make for decorating the apartment for the holidays. She's glueing a miniature plastic deer into a miniature shadow box. The box is decorated with a miniature plastic tree and batting for snow. As she is glueing the deer, she realizes, for the first time that she really enjoys crafting. Sure, she's always enjoyed it. But this time it had meaning. She felt like she was "at home." As the old saying goes it was "home away from home." This was something unique that she had created. It was hers. It was something she was familiar with. The fact that it wasn't a "perfectly made" ornament made it all that much better. The crafts her mother bought and they had made together, passed the time, made a new place seem comfortable, and grew her love of crafting. Decorating with crafts is a wonderful way to make a new place feel comfortable, to pass the time, spend time with family, and can even calm the nerves a bit! I received my transplant call on February 2, 1992. I'm doing fine, the deer ornament still decorates our tree at Christmas and I'm still crafting!