My grandmother has been gone for many years.
Many memories have faded, like old photographs soaked in water—the edges softening, the colors slowly retreating. The sound of her voice, the slight forward lean of her walk, her figure blurred by steam rising from the stove—all of it has softened into a quiet silhouette.
Yet some things remain, unexpectedly, within the body.
Like the scent of dried grass.
When I was a child in the countryside, straw weaving was never considered a “craft.” It was simply life. Sun-dried rice straw, flexible wheat stalks, slender corn leaves—sorted and woven by a pair of aged yet remarkably steady hands. There were no patterns, and few words. She would sit in one corner of the yard, the rustle of straw in her hands sounding like a low conversation with the wind moving beneath the eaves.
Back then, I didn’t understand how such ordinary materials could, through her fingers, become a bird, a grasshopper, a small basket, or a nameless little object. Only much later—after I had left home, left her, and traveled far away—did I begin to understand:
straw weaving was never about decoration. It was a way of gently preserving what would otherwise disappear.
Objects Remember for Us
When someone is gone, memory alone is unreliable. It fades, quietly covered by the weight of new days—not because we forget, but because life keeps moving us forward.
Objects are different.
They remain, silent, outside of time.
When my fingers trace a piece of straw work again, meeting that dry yet warm texture, emotions long folded away by the years suddenly surface. It is not a rush of grief. It feels more like a breeze pushing open a long-closed window—light enters, and for a moment, you see the person sitting within it.
I have come to understand that the deepest feelings are often difficult to name. But they can be held. Placed gently into something tangible.
Craft as a Quiet Memorial
We live in a fast world. Things arrive easily and disappear just as quickly. We replace, update, move on.
Handmaking moves in the opposite direction.
It is slow. It repeats. It weaves time—inch by inch—into its fibers.
From selecting and soaking the straw, to trimming, weaving, and shaping, each step takes patience. And time, perhaps, is the most honest measure of remembrance.
Today, I place these woven birds and small baskets on a bookshelf, along a windowsill, within daily reach. They are not decorations, but quiet companions. They do not ask us to grieve. Yet in an unguarded moment—when afternoon light falls across them, or when fingers brush against them late at night—they remind us that those who have left us were never entirely gone.
Some Longings Need a Shape
We do not spend our days dwelling on loss. But there are moments—a familiar breeze, a remembered scent, a patch of light on a wall—when longing suddenly gains weight.
In those moments, a tangible object offers that feeling a place to rest.
It is not about holding on to the past.
It does not preserve what has been, but it gives love a place to anchor.
Perhaps this is the deepest meaning of making things by hand.