Made with love


Next Spring my daughter will become bat mitzvah and I will present her with the tallit that I am making for her. I have spent the last two days rubberbanding fabric and carefully pouring dye to create what I hope will be a very cool tie-dye effect for her tallit. Last year when I had the chance to make a tallit for myself I knew that this summer I would make one for my daughter to wear. I have been thinking about colors for a year now, so I was ready to start on the first day of camp.

I thought I was ready, but I have been surprised at how spiritual the experience has been so far. Holding the blank fabric in my hands, I realized that less than a year from now I will be standing next to my daughter on the bimah and presenting it for her to wear. The blank canvas was full of possibility and I felt the pressure to get it right. I wanted it to be perfect for her, something that she will love and treasure and hopefully want to keep and use for many years. It took me much longer than I expected to get all the fabric rubberbanded the way I wanted -- at first I thought I had a pattern and design in mind, but I soon realized that I had to give up the pattern. Today I carefully used a spoon to pour the special sun-activated dye over the material, again thinking that I could follow a pattern.



Choosing tie-dye meant that I had to give up some control. I know it will look like a tie-dye... I think it will look cool and I like the colors I chose for her, but it is not an exact science. I won't actually know what it looks like until I remove the rubber bands and open it up tomorrow.  I am not the most artistic person and I have been known to be a bit of a control freak, so it was a good exercise for me to create something that just by the nature of the project I can't control. It was an excellent metaphor for parenting -- another creative endeavor that requires me to let go.

As I worked with the dye I was thinking about my daughter, about how proud I am of her and all the blessings she brings to my life. I was also thinking about all the blessings that I hope her future holds and imagining the day when she will wrap herself in this tallit and the blessings and love that it was created with.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Keep, Toss, Repair: Yom Kippur as a Day of Spiritual Cleaning

Unstuck – Rosh Hashanah 5779

Science, Creation and Paper Midrash at URJ Sci-Tech