Over the weekend we returned to LIVE! with Madison’s Great Wisconsin Quilt Show. Though there weren’t as many vendors as the pre-Covid shows, the vendors who did attend as well as the audience, were delighted to be there. We were too.
Our booth—The Sewing Machine Project’s—was on the main vendor floor for the first time ever. Typically, at trade shows, the nonprofit booths are relegated to their own area. But this year we were in the mix, and in the crowd. It was wonderful.
I’d braced myself for the show. It’s been a few years since I’ve set up the booth, and spent 3 days smiling and talking pretty much nonstop. My pre-Covid self had gotten used to gearing up for these events, the quick intro and description of what we do, ready answers to the most common questions. I wondered how I’d do this year.
I don’t know about you, but Covid made me take a good look at and call into question my priorities and my comfort zones. The isolation was a cave of questions as I evaluated how I respond to different things, how I judge my responses, how I judge myself. I carried these evaluations, like an invisible scorecard, with me as I walked onto the trade show floor last week and was surprised when the energy I needed was right there. It stayed with me all weekend.
And I was grateful. To be the face of an organization I founded, well, I want that face to be smiling.
But the deeper lessons were even more of a surprise. Like little plants beneath spring’s chilly soil, I realized that the organization has grown during Covid. People stopping by the booth shared how they’d come to know the Sewing Machine Project in the last few years. They were so glad to see that we had a presence at the show. People I know and didn’t know stopped to ask about my writing, saying they’d missed it. I didn’t think anyone had noticed it.
The organization has grown without my knowing. And without my knowing it, I’ve grown too. The lessons, in shining notes to myself, don’t necessarily replace the invisible scorecard, but they now accompany it, reminding me that growth can happen outside of our knowing. And when I’m being particularly hard on myself, I’ll try and remember that there is always movement beneath the soil.