Writing in Someone Else's Language

I often roll my eyes at the grammar structure of my department head's memos. English is not her first language, and my snobbery conveniently ignores the fact of my own mono-lingual status. Holy Solitude, my study for Lent, describes the biblical book of Revelation written by John of Patmos as being written in "clumsy, almost illiterate Greek" that was clearly not his first language. Maybe his choice was an attempt to reach out of his banishment to the largest possible audience for his anger and despair. Apparently it was not because he had a gift for the craft of writing. The reflection question asks us to consider the creative power involved in writing in someone else's language. To take it beyond writing, what medium would we choose if we wanted to explore a personal experience through some kind of art?

Sewing is my mother's art language. The whir of her Singer (what an appropriate brand name!) is the defining soundtrack of my childhood. She was flabbergasted by "bought dresses" in which someone didn't even bother to match the plaids, and she didn't mind saying so. In almost every other aspect, she was unusually meek. Maybe the reason I turned to sewing as therapy during a bleak period of my own life is because it represented her strength. Hmmmm. But anyway, when our children were small, we moved from a home and career that I loved to a place that turned out to be a great disappointment for me. It eventually worked out, but for a year I was in a serious funk. One day, mired in the middle of the funk, I picked up a bunch of scrap material and started putting together a rough picture of the front yard, stone walkway, and garden that I had left behind. I cut out pieces and arranged and rearranged, then started stitching by hand and throwing in a little decorative embroidery. It was a marvelous distraction, and looking back in light of this study, a healing time of solitude. Here's the finished product....

 It's not anything special, but it might have kept me sane enough to function day to day. Mom helped me finish it and she put a loop on the back so it could be displayed as a wall hanging. I've never done that, but I might someday. When we were monogramming the tree with the address and the names of our family members and pets who had lived there, my daughter Elizabeth put in her dog Lucy's name as "Loozey." I corrected it and I've regretted it ever since. It was better art with the misspelling.

Writing in someone else's language or sewing in your Mom's language (as the case may be) may let your heart tell you more than your head ever could.