"Where are my scissors?"

Introduction

So I'm living here in Bali, Indonesia, raising an adopted daughter. Long story short - she was fostered with the director of the health center where I came to volunteer many years ago. Her birth family couldn't afford to keep her. When she was two, Elle adopted both of us as her mothers (that's a different story) and so we co-parent her. She divides her time between our two homes. We -- her two Moms -- are also creatives. We're both writers, for one thing, and I'm also a knitter, while the Other Mother sews and makes jewelry. We've passed our love of creating on to Elle. The women in her birth family are weavers, so maybe creativity is in her blood as well.

My creative projects tend to be solo: knitting items for friends and family, or writing. I love the together-factor of working with Elle on her projects.

The Cardboard Vending Machine Project

"Elle," I called out to my daughter. "Where are my good kitchen scissors?" Silence. I went looking for her. She was hunched over on the tile floor between the bedrooms, working intensely on something, completely absorbed. My good kitchen scissors lay on the ground next to her.

"What's that?" I asked. She didn't even turn to look at me, busily gluing bits of cardboard together. "I'm making a cardboard vending machine. I saw it on You Tube," she said. "Oh, yeah, and I borrowed your scissors."

I knelt down to look more closely at what she was doing. She pointed at her project: "See, the coin goes in here and then the prize drops down this chute here and comes out this hole at the front."

She'd covered the front with stickers and little speech bubbles. Normally, she was hesitant about writing in English, as she studied and spoke in Indonesian at her village grade school. But somehow, being inspired to make this project, she'd gotten so absorbed she'd forgotten about her linguistic shyness.

"Can you help me with the puller part?" she asked. "I can't get it to work properly." We watched the video carefully. Apparently, one of the arms that moved back and forth wasn't long enough.

"Hand me the scissors," I said. I cut out longer pieces of cardboard and handed them to her for gluing. After installing the new arm, she was able to pull the mechanism and release the prize from the storage chamber.

"Hey, it really works!" she said. "I thought they were maybe doing a prank and you couldn't really make a vending machine out of cardboard."

She took it to school the next day for show-and-tell and started a cardboard vending machine craze for a few months amoung grade three students at Sekolah Desa 7 Mas.

Facebook post: Sept 14, 2014

I just asked Elle to clean up the mess she left on the floor after making paper puppets. She promptly taped her ankles together, and her mouth closed, before starting to clean up the mess. I think she is making a statement but I have no idea what it could be and trying not to laugh.

The Garden Hose Extender Project

"Elle, why are my good kitchen scissors dull?" I yelled. "I'm in the garden," she yelled back, "Come see what I made!" I wandered outside. Elle was carefully laying a long piece of grey tubing across the lawn.

"Hey Mom," said Elle excitedly, "You know how you always complain about how you can't reach the end of the garden when you're watering? I watched a You Tube video about how you can use plastic tubing to extend your hose. The guy said to use a plastic joint, but I didn't have one, but I found something even better. Look!" she said, pointing. There, between the PVC hose and pipe was a blue plastic funnel. Also from the kitchen.

"Ah, so why are my scissors not sharp anymore?" I asked. "Well, I had to cut the end of the plastic tube. It was really hard." You can't get mad at a kid that's just blunted your best kitchen scissors by figuring out how to extend your garden hose.

"Next, I'm going to make a sprinkler out of a plastic bottle," she said. "Oh, cool, can you show me how to make one?" I asked. "Sure," she said,"Where are the scissors?"

The Monster High Dolls Furniture Project

When Elly was little, she didn't like having a different skin color from her adopted Moms. "I want to be white like you," she would whisper when I hugged her at bedtime and tucked her in. She used to scrub herself hard in the bath, hoping to magically reveal paler skin underneath.

I spoke about this once with a Black American rapper and musician at a dinner party in Ubud. He was adopted and raised by a white mother. He told me he grew up confused about his identity, and wanting at first, like Elle, to be white like his Mom. "Teach her to be proud of being a person of color," he said.

The trouble was, as a white American, I'm like the fish who can't regard the water it lives in. I was used to being accepted for my skin color. My gender was the more common issue when dealing with people I didn't know and I didn't experience the daily racial micro-aggressions my BIPOC friends did. I honestly didn't know where to start trying to teach a girl of color to be proud of her difference. We read books and watched movies about Black girls, and about bullying and discrimination. My American BIPOC friends gave advice, but none had grown up in a mixed family. Elle still kept saying she wanted to be white.

Then one day I was shopping in Target (on a trip to Melbourne) when I saw Monster High Dolls for the first time. They're made by Mattel and based on the hit web series, "Monster High," about a school for kids that are, well, different. Here's a great explanation from Stephanie Borge in an article she wrote for Vocal.

"I love the message they shared about being yourself, the slogan was catchy it was “Be yourself, be unique, be a monster.” I thought it was amazing how the show was teaching kids that it’s not cool to bully others. The web-episode talked about self-esteem like it’s okay to come out of your shell, don’t be shy. I loved the other monsters on the web-episode because it shows that not everyone is the same and had “Freaky Flaws.” (That means we all have issues that make us unique.)"

The Monster High kids have blue skin, green skin, fish scales, fangs, horns, tails and snake hair. They each have a "freaky flaw." They're proud to be different. They're cool.

Over several years, I bought Elle a small collection. The dolls travelled with her, went to school inside her backpack, slept with her and even shared baths. Elle got into the web series and I loved the message it promoted about being proud of who you are. Even if you have fish scales or a tail.

We sewed clothes for the dolls from scraps of cloth or altered tiny clothes we found at the op-shop. One day, Elle discovered a packing box with cardboard corner protectors that were the right size and shape to use as doll armchairs. So I pulled out my good kitchen scissors, sewing kit, glue and scrap fabric and we upholstered the "chairs," and made seat cushions for the dolls to sit on. We went on to make beds, a dining table and other furniture with the rest of the box.

Elle's long outgrown her dolls and they've been passed on to younger kids in our community. But they did the trick, because after her Monster High phase, Elle stopped saying she wanted to be white.

The Fairies in the Garden Project

Elle was at school. The grey clouds were threatening rain so I was moving drying laundry inside when I noticed a trail of craft supplies scattered across the yard. They led directly to a pair of scissors in a tree.

That evening I asked -- because you just have to ask -- "Why were your scissors in a tree?"

"Oh," she replied, hunched over her school books at the dining table,"I was making something for the fairies in the garden. Now, Mom, I have to concentrate on my math homework."

I never found out what the fairy project was.

The Chocolate Project

"Elle, why are my good kitchen scissors all sticky?" I yelled. "Oh, I used them to cut up some tape," she said. Turns out she'd made me a box of mock-chocolates for my birthday, using black electrical tape and an old shoebox, cut down to size.

"I know how much you love chocolate," she said, grinning, "So now you'll always have some when you want them." I had to use methylated spirits to get the glue off the scissors.

The Knitting Projects

I love to knit. My grandmother taught me when I was seven. She came for a long visit from Australia to New Jersey, where my family lived. She taught me to cast on, knit and purl. I started a bright red scarf. However, Gran went home without teaching me how to cast off, so my scarf grew and grew, until it was as long as Dr. Who's, until I finally gave up.

I picked up knitting again in college. I loved the way using a pair of needles and some yarn was like a kind of meditation and helped me to "knit out" a difficult problem or craft an essay in my head. I've always preferred simple projects that don't require following complex patterns. I make lots of scarves, cowls and basic hats for friends and family. When I discovered lace, I felt like I'd stumbled across knitting gold. You make lace by following rows of a pattern, which repeat at certain intervals. Once you've done a few sections, the design begins to emerge, and your fingers remember the pattern, so you can go at a faster and faster pace. I love to listen to podcasts while I knit, so lace is the perfect choice for me: challenging enough to make something truly unique but repetitive enough that I can keep half my mind on listening. I get through a lot of podcasts that way! The other special thing about knitting and listening is that when I run my fingers over my project, I remember what I listened to when I knit it.

The Tim Ferris Show podcast lace shawl and the Tales of the Otori audio books hat I made for my Mum's bald head when she was undergoing chemo are on the left below. My yarn stash on the right (not too bad really - only about six projects-in-waiting).

The Black Tapes Podcast cowl. I seriously got so spooked listening to this series that I've not picked up this project again.

I combine my love of kntting with my other love, travel, and make a point of visiting yarn shops where ever I go, to add to my yarn stash -- ahem, I mean plan new projects.

The Baking Projects

In the past few years, Elle has really gotten into baking. Her Other Mother taught her how to make bread and bagels, and You Tube taught her how to make perfect chocolate chip cookies. She always makes an extra batch of cookies for her classmates and keeps a take-away container full for me because they disappear quickly at her other house. She knows how much I love chocolate.

Elle's a better baker than me, so I often sit in the kitchen with a cup of tea and chat with her, waiting for that first batch of cookies or bagels to come out of the oven.

She's also become a talented artist and I often come across her sketching or searching for images on Instagram or Pinterest. She's more into TikTok these days than YouTube.

I miss working on maker and craft projects with her but ...

... in the end, the best creations we made together were memories and Elle is the project I'm most proud of.