Making do

There is a photo of me and my brother in a photo album that is tucked into one of my mother’s overstuffed closets. It is yellowed with age by now, tinted like an instagram. I am probably four or five; my brother a year younger.

In the picture, we are both sporting identical rice bowl bangs, and I am wearing a handmade powder blue polyester coat with shiny white buttons. My white tights are slightly too big and rumpled around my ankles. My brother — without a shred of self-consciousness — wears a cape of a decidedly pink hue with an explosion of flowers all over it. The fabric was gauzy and floaty and had just the right billowing consistency for those moments that required running to save a damsel in distress. You gotta make do with what’s available and he loved that cape.

We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so there was a lot of making do. Yet I remember a childhood rich with imagination and homemade goods to meet our every need. What is now a fashionable DIY trend for many people was a necessity for my mother who could weave magic from nothing. Need a playhouse? Poof, scraps of wood materialized into a miniature house. Acting out a story and need giant fairy-eating flora? Shazaam, gargantuan paper flowers in every color suddenly grew out of our hardwood floors. Looking back, it was an amazing way to grow up.

I am not quite as crafty nor am I as prolific as my mother, but I strive to create that kind of childhood for K. One where odds and ends became a treasure trove of possibilities. One where happiness is made by hand.