The Gift of Sensitivity: Final Reveal

My 2025 creative project “The Gift of Sensitivity” is done. This massive princess-and-the-pea miniature now lives in a glass cabinet in our house. There have been some interesting comments about it.

I overheard my husband telling someone I’d been working on this for five years. I thought “Ten!” but didn’t correct him. Then I found a note that said I started working on this project in 2004, which means it took me twenty-one years to complete. So we were both wrong.

My 14-year-old nephew, looking at the massive pile of mattresses as I told him the story, said, “It wasn’t the pea that kept the princess awake. It was oxygen deprivation.”

I was simultaneously amused and pleased. Partially because he knew what oxygen deprivation was, but mostly because he got it. 

From the start, this project was about making the fairy tale real. No one has a bed with forty mattresses on it waiting for a princess to show up. It has to be assembled using mattresses pulled from all over the castle. It would probably have to be put in an abandoned tower that no longer has floors in it because it would be too tall for any normal room. You wouldn’t even have a ladder long enough, which is why I made two different ladders and lashed them together. And that poor princess who isn’t sleeping definitely needs a book to keep her company. What better than The Gift of Sensitivity to help her appreciate her superpower?

I’m glad I gave myself a deadline for this project. The final construction was finished on December 31 because of it. And once everything was made, I was eager to take photos of it and get it put away somewhere safe from the cats. Technically the project bled into the first week of this year, but I don’t care. What matters is that it’s done, and I’m pleased with the results.