Weaving Words and Rugs

   

      After my grandmother set her wedding date, she prepared for her new life as a wife by spending months cutting, dying and weaving enough rag scraps to carpet all the floors of her small home. Her name was Serena Hayward, and I never met her--but from what I've heard, I would have liked to. I inherited a large floor loom and with it, a fascination for making rugs out of rags.
 
     The thing that amazes me about weaving is how--using the magic of a loom and some skill--I can turn scraps of fabric into beautiful, enduring rugs. I use them for warmth in my home, and gifts for my friends.
 
It pleases me to make something out of nothing.
 
     Writing, to me, is a form of weaving. A scrap of conversation overheard in a hospital waiting room, an odd mannerism noticed in a woman on a bus, a weakness overcome in my own life, the worn rag of an old heartache, the golden thread of a particular life-sustaining scripture--somehow, someway, it all gets woven into the warmth of a new story that I hope will be beautiful and enduring. A gift I can give to my friends.
 
It pleases me to make something out of nothing.