Yesterday I found myself sitting at the sewing machine, Sadie on my lap, sewing… doll clothes for Sadie’s doll. Because it’s December, and that was clearly the wisest way to spend my sewing time. Not on, say, Christmas presents. Sigh.

Still, I meant to sew this doll a skirt when Sadie first got it. For her birthday. In October. And I just now got around to it.

Isn’t she cute? I didn’t make the doll. (It’s from BlaBla.) I also didn’t knit the sweater. (Also BlaBla.) (I don’t even know how to knit.) (Now I feel compelled to point out that I didn’t make the kitchen counter either, but you probably knew that already.)

I got about halfway through sewing the skirt before I remembered that doll skirts? Take pretty much as long to sew as people skirts. Same number of seams, just smaller. Sigh again. I think I lack the Planning Gene. There’s a gene for that, right? For making good and logical plans? Because that’s the one I think I’m missing. The one that leads you to get your Christmas gifts in order by November, the one that causes you to have seasonally-appropriate meal plans, the one that means you never run out of clean socks on cold days because you planned what you were going to wear ahead of time.

That’s the gene I lack.

Or maybe it’s just self-discipline?

Or maybe it’s that, instead of me teaching the kids to be competent planners, they’re teaching me to be more impulsive. (Sew now! Doll clothes! Because Sadie wants to!) Or maybe we’re meeting each other halfway.

And you know, Sadie loved sitting and watching the needle go and pulling the thread off the machine while it was sewing so that the thread tension went all wonky. (I enjoyed that last one somewhat less than she did.) And we’re both thrilled with that little skirt, even if maybe I could have knocked a couple of things of the holiday to-do list in the time it took us to make it.

It’s supposed to be about joy, right? Mine, hers—that’s what I wanted to plan in the first place. Not particular sewing projects, not any particular accomplishments. Joy. Time and space to find the joy.

Right. I remember now.