Tie Dye Day

Jessie’s friend Rachel called this morning. She’s been working incredibly hard but has a day off and asked Jessie if she wanted to do tie-dye t-shirts. My knee jerk reaction when I heard “tie dye” was NO!

There is a reason that the kit Jessie was given almost 6 years ago has never been opened… I have spent most of those 6 years hiding it in various places so when Jessie and her friends asked for it, it couldn’t be found. While Jessie and many of her friends delight in painting and crafts—Rachel in particular, is quite a wonderful and whimsical artist, in any medium (see picture of the chair she and her sister Rebecca made for Jessie before she headed off to university last year)—Jessie always seems to get more paint or glue on herself and her clothing than on the paper or shirt or piece of furniture that they are working on.

I gave up being a crafty-type mom when Jess was about 14 and I realized that no matter how old Jessie and her friends got, Moms still cleaned up the mess. Instead, I became a crafty mom, one who learned to misplace key ingredients for the more involved crafts—those that required super-indelible-never-come-off-until-you-die kind of paints and markers and glue.

So when I heard the words “tie-dye” I panicked. “No Mom,” said Jess. “I’m going to go over to Rachel’s to do it. I just need to bring the kit.”

I sigh with relief and relax. But that just goes to show you how low I have sunk, because Rachel’s Mom, my friend Cathy, is away and I am so totally willing to let Jessie go over to Rachel’s and do tie-die, knowing that the ensuing mess might still be waiting on the back deck for her when she returns from Cincinnati later this week. Cathy. If you’re reading this, sorry!