Scissors

Day 236: Scissors

Bad scissors, plus a button
and PostIt flags

Scissors are ingenious. Exquisitely simple. Universally useful. Elegant. No household is complete without a pair, or several.

Did you know they were invented 1500 years ago in ancient Egypt? We can also thank the Egyptians for breathmints and toothpaste, door locks and bowling, written language and calendars.

I've unearthed many pairs of scissors over the past 231 days. Fabric Fiskars, kitchen shears, needlepoint scissors with a stork design, nail scissors, all-purpose shears, medical scissors (for removing stitches), wire cutters, pinking shears, pruning shears. Tiny little ones folded into a Swiss army knife. We use them all.

When Emma Jane was studying U.S. colonial history (and I was quizzing her), I learned that the typical colonial lived in abject poverty, struggling day-to-day to survive. They were not Charles and Caroline Ingalls, living independently, off the grid, like old-fashioned militant group members. Mental illness, harsh weather, low wages, alcoholism, poor health care, wage discrimination. Lack of tools. A pair of scissors like this would have been sharpened, and tightened, and wrapped in cloth, and kept safe.

In my house, when the kids were young, but old enough to use scissors on their own, scissors disappeared like potato chips. I tried keeping a pair in every drawer, but they would slip away like a fistful of dry sand.

Misplaced but not lost. They've been popping out of every bin and cupboard and shelf. I'm back to a pair in every drawer. This one single pair - with its too long, too loose blades and blunted tip - is the player who didn't get a seat when the music stopped.

I've been thinking lately about what a pleasure it has been, these past 16 years, to leave the chaos of my child-soaked house for the neat calm at my parents', every Sunday for family dinner. Everything has a place, and everything in its place. We are heading in that direction now. The part of me that reveled in the connected chaos of those warm little needy passionate rosy-cheeked metamorphosizing affirming little bits of life is a little sad.

But when I put down the computer and take out my needlepoint bag, I won't be sorry to find a pair of sharp scissors inside.