A few days ago, I found my nine year old grand daughter, Luciana, buried in a crochet project that had been assigned by her third grade teacher. During this period of home schooling, incredibly beautiful skills have been introduced and passionate fires fanned, one being handwork. As Luciana navigated the intricacies of adding and decreasing stitches and rounding the corners of her creation, she commented on the fact that it was not perfect. She leaned forward and examined a specific slightly loose stitch and then held it up to me with “Is it alright?” I said “It’s perfect”. She said “It isn’t exactly like the others”, and I said “That is the beauty of handwork. If one used a machine, the stitches would be immaculately even and there would be no personality in the work. That is the beauty of handwork, we humans do not deliver as machines do.” She settled back into her work with a relaxed satisfaction and then she muttered “This would never do for Huck. He would rip the whole thing out and begin all over again. He doesn’t even back up and undo the one thing that he thinks isn’t perfect, that is not acceptable to him. He has to start all over again, from the beginning, and do perfection. THAT is being a perfectionist.”
I agreed.
And then she said “If I did that I’d never get anywhere.
I said “Well, we are all different.”
And she said “Thank goodness. Huck will probably do something amazing.”
And so will she.