Dedicated To The One I Love

My mom and I are frighteningly similar. I didn't see it so much when I was younger, but I see it very clearly now, more and more as we develop a relationship as adults and as friends, instead of merely mother and daughter. At the end of the day, I understand better than most the way her mind works, and I really enjoy having that inside connection, to know that she's going to respond to certain things in the exact same way that I do.

This, of course, can be really dangerous.

I tend to be a little overly enthusiastic about my interests. When I was growing up, I left a wake of newly indoctrinated horse enthusiasts in my trail. I used to joke that horse fever was contagious and that there was no cure for it. As my interests broadened, so did the swathe of devastation.

Because we are so similar, my mom is extremely susceptible to my infectious interests.

I started researching about weaving because it fascinated me. I bought a used loom off of ebay and taught myself how to weave. I obsessed about weaving for several months, go so far as to buy raw wool, dye it myself with KoolAid, and spin it on a drop spindle to use on my loom. I was enthusiastic and addicted. I called my mom up every day and waxed eloquent about how fun it was, and how essential it was as a part of   life in general. After all, how could we ever clothe ourselves come Doomsday, if we didn't know how to process fibers and make cloth?

Mom didn't stand a chance. Next thing you know she had an eight harness high-grade loom, all kinds of linen and other threads for the warp, and she had even corralled my dad into helping her thread the loom, which is one of the most tiresome activities on the planet.

When I started hatching eggs in an incubator and raising chickens, ducks, and geese, it really looked like my mom was going to end up with an incubator. We discussed it and realized that she really didn't want to hatch and go through the work of it herself, so... she got ducks.

My parents love their ducks. They really will dust off the loom and use it one of these days. They really will buy land to raise those miniature goats, and go on that trip to Ireland, and make homemade kefir, and grow cherries on their own trees, and try dyeing with natural substances, and own silkies, and... and...

Is it any wonder that my mom calls me the 'Evil Enabler'?

There are two mother figures in Seaborn. Both of them draw a little on aspects of my relationship with my real mom.

This one is for you, Mom!