Family
Building a Whole Life
DIY lessons from my parents
This might be a controversial take, but I’m going to come out and say that I may have been the cutest Raggedy Ann of all time. At the very least, top five. The secret to my success? My parents. Sure, they gave me whatever genes I needed to grow those massive cheeks, but my mom also handmade the entire costume (wig included). When I was a kid, she handmade everything.
I grew up next door to my paternal grandparents, who somehow came into a significant chunk of farmland despite not being farmers, and gifted a building lot to my young parents. Subsequently, my dad built the house I grew up in with the help of family and friends. Years later, we all pitched in (I was probably six years old, but pretty sure I was super helpful) to build another house one lot over for my aunt, uncle, and cousins.
As far as I could tell, my parents made the world. They built our house including the cabinets and kitchen table, the little cubby under the stairs, the dog houses, storage sheds, the swing set, and the big deck off of the living room. My mom sewed my clothes (both daily wear and special occasion items), and I’m pretty sure she actually made her own wedding dress and the bridesmaid dresses, too. She continued that tradition when I got married, sewing a dress and veil for me. Growing up, she sewed curtains for my bedroom windows and closet, all of my Halloween costumes and the costumes for our church Christmas pageant, and new dresses for my dolls (sometimes she also made the dolls). When I broke my collarbone in a bike accident, she made me a fabric sling to wear until the doctor could see me.
Some of my parents’ most impressive DIYs were necessary fixes. For instance, my mom is rather ingenious at redirecting and collecting leaks with recyclables and twine. I have no memory of it, but I’m told she once placed a cookie sheet on the floor of an old car after the floor rusted through. This is certainly not safe, nor up to 2024 code, but my parents did what they had to in order to get by at the time. A lot of that meant DIY.
Holidays were trimmed in handmade decorations and fed with dishes baked from scratch. School books were covered in brown paper bags, onto which my dad sketched themed images to match each subject area. My mother cut my bangs and sewed scrunchies for my hair. My dad, grandpa, and brother worked together on car repairs.
There’s a famous family tale of my mom driving to the town transfer station and encountering a dead pheasant in the rode on the way home. She could see that it has been hit by a car and, as it was not there on her way out, she knew it was fresh. She brought it home, called her brothers to walk her through the process of cleaning it, and made us pheasant soup for dinner. And so we all ate roadkill.
As an adult parent, I read my son Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods— such a fitting title, as we had both a “big woods” and a “little woods” next to my childhood home. I found the book awfully boring. So the dad plays the the fiddle when he comes home and they all smile? My dad played us all sorts of instruments, sang songs, and made up stories. They’re sewing and baking and cooking? Playing outside together? Check, check, check! Been there. Yes, I had a wooden sled with my name on it that my grandpa made. Does anything cool even happen in this book?!
In fact, I’m glad I read my son that boring book, and even gladder that he gets to know his grandparents; that we live less than a mile from the amazing home I grew up in; that my mom is always sewing her grandsons quilts, costumes, and clothes; that my dad still helps with home repairs. As it turns out, I was more or less raised in a storybook. I see that now. Here, I was prepared to make a joke about DIY-ing the book of my life, which only made me remember when we learned to make recycled paper at my aunt’s house, or when my mom thread-bound the stories and poetry collections I wrote for school. I really could hand-make my life story — my sister would illustrate it, too.
All things considered, my do-it-yourself story is more a of a do-it-together story in the end. Lucky me! I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Thanks to Amanda Laughtland for maintaining The DIY Diaries and sparking our memories and imaginations with her stories.