We get to be both

Last night I lay awake way past bedtime stressing out about something that, turns out, is totally stupid. But sometimes we just have to worry our way through dumb shit in order to get to the bottom of things–we have to wade through the muck of our hangups so we can really get past them.

First of all: 2 year birthday parties. When my oldest son (now almost 11) turned 2, I pulled out some serious stops. I made each child a one-of-a-kind star-shaped beanbag with streamers…I baked three kinds of cake…I decorated the fucking park. I didn’t go as far as this lady, but still. Turning 2 is a big deal, and everything has to be perfect. {No it doesn’t.}

So it’s Bricolage’s 2nd birthday, and I totally relapsed into perfectionist mode for a minute. To be clear, I’m totally a believer in putting effort into things, and making them as great as they can be. But that means different things to different people, and I think it’s really easy to get wrapped up in a Martha-ized version of greatness, losing sight of one’s own.

Yesterday Erin Cunningham installed most of Whispering Pines: The Hazel B. Jackson Project. It’s positively stunning.

She has managed to create her own little world back in our tiny gallery room. It’s so her. All mossy and woodsy and delicate and kinda sad. The food for tomorrow night is going to follow that theme: it’s going to be a tea party with little sandwiches and cakes and…you know…tea. So there’s this beautiful cohesiveness to it all that is just perfect.

So what’s the problem, you ask? {Spoiler alert: there isn’t one! But keep reading!} Jules and I decided to make special little gifts for the first 50 people through the door tomorrow night. It’s a surprise. But for the sake of the story, let’s just say that they’re a little more rock ‘n’ roll than you’d expect at a tea party titled Whispering Pines. I had a minor meltdown about it last night because as much as I love the little things that we created, I was suddenly needing it to be more cohesive with the show. Needing it to match. I had this moment of feeling like I had totally failed. The rock ‘n’ roll door prizes are going to ruin the tea party. And the cucumber sandwiches are going to ruin the birthday party. And everybody is going to have a terrible time.

Fuck that. Because guess what!? We get to be both.

We get to have a rock ‘n’ roll tea party. We get to be uncoordinated. We get to embrace both {all} sides of who we are and what we represent. We are high-brow // low-brow. Being all one or the other gets downright boring, and makes for a pretty one-dimensional experience. So expect both. Be both. See you tomorrow. It’ll be perfect.