I'm going to give two even though I feel like the rest of the world won't put as much value on my accomplishments as I do.
1. I made a quilt.
It is the most tangible accomplishment I have since college graduation. I pieced it from scratch without a patter or guide book. Well, I used books as references for technique as well as the well of knowledge which my grandmother is on all things sewing. (She's addicted to Project Runway just like me.) Then I created the pattern that I would quilt into it all by myself, once again not using a pre-made pattern. I borrowed a quilt frame from my grandmother and spent three months hand stitching the quilting details into it.
Quilt top on the frame
Why quilt by hand? people ask me, thinking I've gone crazy. To immediately shut them up I tell them that you can't quilt on your average $200 sewing machine and that the cost of a machine that can handle the quilting is outrageous for someone who doesn't know when they'll ever get around to making a second quilt. Properly mollified, I tell them the real answer: it's tradition. The women of my family have been making quilts for generations, and always doing the quilting part by hand. You should see some of the beautiful things they've made over the years. Always with tiny squares (if your smallest piece of fabric is bigger than 4x4" finished you're made a "quick and simple" project according to them). Always with tiny, tiny, even stitches (mine aren't as tiny but, damnit, they're even!)
But I was also someone who felt like I had no heritage or traditions to claim as my own. Where I saw friends who had a religious or cultural tradition passed on to them by their families I felt I had no similar connection. This project has brought me closer to the women of my extended family and made me more connected to relatives I have never even met. My grandmother beams with pride. She tells my great-Aunt Joyce who bubbles with enthusiasm that one of the "young people" is taking it up. My grandmother even invoked the name of her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother, the woman who taught my grandmother how to quilt, to tell me how proud she would be too if she was still alive to see my little project.
(That last bit is a joke: my "little" project fits a queen or a king sized mattress ... which of course I don't have.)
2. I left law school
Most people would read that phrase as a failure, not an accomplishment. But the truth is that it would have been easier for me to stay in law school than it was for me to leave it. It would have been simple to keep plodding down a well worn rut, to do the numbered and tasks listed out in front of me with bulleted subtasks, to take the degree and become that person. It would have been easy. Not because the work load was light -- on the contrary it was enough to bury a person alive and the whole system was designed to bury you not help dig you out -- but because there was no risk involved.
I knew exactly what was coming. Sure there was anxiety when you took your seat in lecture hall. Would you get called on? Were your briefs good enough? Would the professor ride your ass if you messed up or would he graciously and embarrassingly move onto the next victim? But every single law student knew that if they could just pass the bar they would be a lawyer. There was a surety among these people that was eerie. They were people with Plans, and were not to be stopped by puny things like humor or outlandish statements.
Annoyingly, I was the only person whose humor did not involve either alcohol or Regan references.
When I walked away it felt right. It felt so right. Most of the students whom I was anxious about telling because I was certain I would receive further snubbery than I had already expressed their envy that I had a plan outside of the hell of law school. It was odd that my greatest acceptance was found in leaving.
I had attended the Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop the summer prior to starting law school. It was supposed to be one last huzzah. Instead, when the week long intensive workshop ended and on that night I gave my reading to the assembled group, it felt like coming home.
It took me another four months to realize that home was behind me and walking down the well worn rut to being an attorney would only take me further away not closer to the one place where my heart was.
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