I remember when I used to make things.

It wasn’t that long ago, really, although it feels as though it’s been a million years. I grew up making things. My grandmother taught me how, and then I taught myself. When I was a child, I learned to crochet, embroider, knit. I learned how to make macramé and papier-mâché. Some things I learned in summer camp. Some things I learned in art class, in my elementary school. Some things I just figured out, like how to make my own paper dolls, and the dresses for them. Once I took an old shelf and turned it into an elaborate dollhouse — or at least it was elaborate in my mind, because it was filled with stories. I made clothespin dolls to live in it: a family, in which the father was a vampire, the mother a witch. The grandmother was a mummy, whom they called grandmummy. There were two girls, one angelic, one devilish, and a little boy named bat, as well as an assortment of servants. Their clothes were partly painted on, partly crocheted. I papered the walls with fancy paper, made furniture. I would have liked to live in that house myself . . .

At various times I have knitted scarves, hats, and sweaters. In law school, desperately unhappy, I made an entire 1820s dress by hand, sewing every cartridge pleat, from an old pattern. Once, for a present, I traced my daughter’s hands on a pillow and embroidered the outlines, then asked her to write her name (she had just learned to write it), and embroidered the letters just as she had written them. I have made countless Christmas ornaments and children’s toys. I have painted in watercolors and oils, refinished furniture, sewn decorative pillows . . . But all this feels very long ago, when I used to make things. Now I’m so busy that I no longer have time — it feels faster to buy the things I need. Faster, but it gives me less pleasure, and I don’t have the same affection for the things I buy as for the things I used to make. I still have all the things my grandmother made when she was alive, acres of lace and embroidery, a portfolio filled with sketches and paintings. I still have her hand-written recipes. Someday, I will try to translate them from Hungarian.

Somehow, I don’t think it’s just busyness, which is why I’m writing this blog post. I think many of us are getting out of the habit of making things. Not all of us — I have friends who post photos of the scarves they’ve knitted, the cakes they’ve baked (because that’s a kind of making too, and yes, I used to bake, once). And of course I have friends who are professional artists, who are always making things, with a kind of joy I envy even though I know those paintings and sculptures will be for sale, that their making is part of their livelihood. I think it was easier to make things before we were all online, all the time. When there was still silence, and even boredom. When, sometimes, there was nothing to do but make. Nowadays, we have to create a space for ourselves — not just a physical space, but a mental space. We have to create the silence.

Over Christmas, I made something. It was only a little thing: I found some laser-cut snowflakes, and I thought, these would make good ornaments for the tree. So I painted them (my daughter helped), first with an acrylic paint, and then with a glossy spray paint to give them a little shine. It was very little effort, and took almost no skill, but it gave me a particular sense of satisfaction to hang them on the tree.

Somehow, I need to find more time to make things, physical tangible things, whether I’m sketching or stitching or looping yard together. I live so much in the intangible — online, in words, even in teaching, which is about the passing on of ideas. If that’s a kind of making, it’s entirely mental. Sometimes I forget that I live in the world. But making things reminds me that I am embodied — a made thing myself, continually being remade by physical and psychological forces. I am stitched together, knit together, flesh and bone. It’s easy to forget . . .

So that’s my resolution for this year, or at least one of them: to make things. And to make time in my life for making. I wish you, not just a wonderful new year, but the space to make and be made, to become — whatever beautiful thing you want to be.

These were my snowflakes, painted:

And here was one hung on the tree: