On Design.

I sand and paint a small yellow ceramic chick when I am five, and I remember holding it up in incredulous wonder. I made this. My mom hangs my elementary drawings on the fridge, and my teacher's happiness when I illustrate my kindergarten journal in slurred crayon is exuberant - the cover on which I recall pasting a patterned wallpaper scrap. Things can be made from my hands. That addicting realization of transforming small parts into amazingly tactile things. Hands on. Made. Fondled. Befuddling personality and ripe humanness, melded into every visible thread. Stitched together bit by careful haphazard bit. Spent some time with. Felt. Sensory happenstance. It jumps off the paper to be experienced in the coziest of surprise. Home after a long day. A familiar hug.

But, racing downhill in exhilarating newness faster than your legs can circumvolve. The wind mussing your hair. Adventuring into new territory, blind. We've been here, it says. Once nothing, something firm that won't wisp out of your grasp. Didn't materialize out of thin air. Connected. Firm roots. Remembering where it all came from in a kind of familiar relative confusion.

What it's like to be both five, and one hundred and five.

Photo Sources: 1/2/3/4/5