Little Earthquakes

My hands are shaky and my knees are weak
I can't seem to stand on my own two feet
Who do you thank when you have such luck?
I'm in love
I'm all shook up
Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!

- Elvis Presley

I am sure by now, you have heard about our little midwest shake down on Friday morning - one of the only times in recent history that we here in our little corner of the world have been the "top story" on the national news.

I slept through the initial 5.4 quake, but was wide awake for the 4.6 aftershock.

Perhaps I should point out that while I was quiet, the earth was not.

My DH missed the aftershock; we assume it was because he was moving at the time and thus did not notice any change. If you are already moving fast, you are unlikely to register an additional jolt to the system. It is only when we are still and attentive that we register the imbalance.

Unless, of course, the earth opens up in front of us.

That's hard to ignore.

Earthquakes are interesting phenomenon. They shake us to the core, because we make the mistake of taking the relative stability in our foundation for granted. We move along at our own pace expecting our underpinnings to remain constant, safe, secure...

And then, in a moment, we are forcibly reminded of how transitory and artificial our assumptions are. We are all shook up.

The little earthquakes in our lives open our eyes to the possibility that, just perhaps...

all is not as it seems.

This leaves us with two options: adjustment or denial.

We can go about our lives as if the quake never happened, ignoring the turmoil of uncertainty in our souls, or we can learn...

• To remain flexible, rather than rigid
• To bend, instead of break
• To embrace compromise, in place of dogma

To ride out the earthquakes and regain our balance.

On Friday, residents of central Indiana were counseled to do a walk- around survey of our homes to check for cracks in the foundation.

Earthquakes will do that. They have a way of revealing the cracks in our foundations.

Death, divorce, job loss, illness, break ups, children moving out, substance abuse.

All the little earthquakes in our lives challenge us to reassess, to find a new center point, to accept a new configuration of the landscape.

We can be tempted to smooth things over rather than do the hard work entailed in rehab. But we do so at our own peril. If we build on a cracked foundation, the edifice cannot stand.

We must regroup and repair, before we can rebuild.

Whether we are speaking of our homes, our lives, or our knitting.


On Saturday morning, Iris looked like this:


She was lovely.


She looked perfect.


But her foundation was cracked.


I tried beading every row on this one, instead of only wrong side rows.I loved the way the iridescent beads, when combined with the open stitch pattern, played against the less open, smoother texture of the largely stockinette shell pattern.


I loved the way she looked.


But she weighed a ton.


That'll happen when we value form over function.


I had built a lovely facade upon a foundation too delicate to support its weight.


You know what that means:


Yep...


Patch, patch, patch...


Earthquakes.


Can't live with 'em. Can't deny 'em...


Can only accept them, repair the damage, and move on.