cradle

Evansville
Sunday July 10, 2011

In Evansville, one can really experience a midwestern summer. I used to escape here to my dad’s comfortable old colonial house, at the end of the school year, in mid-June, and recover from the end of the year crazies by sitting by the pool and reading a good book. Little by little I would feel the brittle, tired, stiff effects of stress slowly melt into the warm animal of my body (as Mary Oliver described it): skin getting browner, sitting further back in the chair from my usual perched position, easily succumbing to a nap just about anywhere.
Last week my dad brought me down here in his seventeen year old white Lincoln continental, driving all the way down Indiana on old 41, stopping at the Subway and the Cracker Barrel, because of the cancer, because he needs to have me within his sight. Just too scary to talk on the phone with 499 miles between us right now. He needs to see for himself that I can function allright despite this giant mass of tumors in my liver, that every night I sleep and all day long I eat fresh tomatoes, sweet corn, peaches and Posey County melon without too much trouble beyond the occasional mild protestations from my digestive system. He needs to see me laugh and watch movies and help out of in the kitchen and put some makeup on the morning, which any woman knows is a sure sign that you aren’t too despondent. There is some kind of healing quality to going through the rituals of doing one’s hair, putting on the mascara and the shadow, dabbing on some cologne and showing a little cleavage. I don’t want to look like the sort of cancer patient that I grew up seeing on TV. The thing is, this isn’t all that difficult right now since I feel pretty much like I always have. I still have some kind of naïve protection from what I already know about this cancer that says, “yes, take those vitamins and supplements. Eat the yogurt, good for your liver.”
Dad brings me food and iced tea and offers me a blanket on the couch. He pats me on the head and on the arm and gives me such sweet, reassuring smiles that it nearly makes me cry.
There’s a birdhouse right outside the back door that has a GO BLUE license plate for a roof. Inside there are baby birds, whose wide-open mouths you can see as the mother bird comes and goes, her jumps off the edge of the little house creating a soft, swinging motion, back and forth, like a cradle. At night, she sits inside with her head framed by the round opening hole.

cancer, the sequel

Some of you know that this blog began when I had ocular melanoma, a particularly nasty tumor in my eye that led to it's removal in February 08. Recently, questionable liver work raised a red flag and it has been determined that this cancer has now spread to my liver in a big way.

For the past few weeks, I have been thinking about writing this post and going back to reporting updates/progress through the blog once again. My family and friends have once again rallied around me and I feel the results of prayer and thoughts coming my way. They are a great comfort to me and hold me up from the pit of negativity and fear. I thank all of you for your energy and love.

I am being treated at St. Mary's Laks Cancer Center in Grand Rapids, MI, and my oncologist is Dr. Gribbin. I will be having a specialized form of treatment which will hopefully reduce the size of the tumor and allow for it to be surgically removed later, when I have enough healthy liver to handle the job later on.

I have been through the anger, the denial, and the bargaining. The Buddhists say that all suffering comes from resistance, and that makes sense to me. Taking it a day at a time has never sounded like such a good idea.

Mother

Today I wonder what and who my mother would be at 86 years old and realize that when it comes to matters of the life of the soul, neither past nor future matter and the living and the dead occupy equal places in our hearts. It doesn't matter that she has been dead for over thirty years or that she had so many dreams and wild imaginings locked deep in her heart that she felt that she could never share. What matters is what I know of her and the ways in which she lives in me and in my children.

When I found her wooden paint box yesterday, while going through long-closed boxes from another life, I was struck by how clean and orderly the brushes were and the care with which her painting cloth was folded. I pictured her hands caring for them, having watched those hands so many times in my life. I used to sit by her vanity-a little desk-like table, French Provencial, with a mirror on top that lifted up to reveal her cosmetics, bobby pins, cotton balls and the like. After her shower she would don her bathrobe and sit on the little padded bench, smiling her dazzling smile at her image as she checked the angles and the makeup application. I watched her cook and clean, sew and embroider, paint and draw. Always her beautiful hands moved with care and precision in whatever she did. Watching her write, her tiny slanted letters gracefully moving across the page, I noticed that she had her own way of making the cursive capitol letters, different than I was learning in school. I liked that about her, her originality, that little bit of rebellion against all of the things in her life that were so perfect...the model-thin figure, the perfect hair, the air of elegance, the long cigarette holder, the jewelry chosen just so, the impossibly slender feet in the high heeled shoes that were returned to box and tissue paper at the end of the day.

I am trying to remember her hands on me as she braided my long hair, tied the sashes of my handmade dresses, wiped my tears. I am aching to remember her voice and her smell. I wish I knew what she was thinking on those late nights with the book open and the scotch in her hand but her eyes looking out somewhere that I couldn't see.

clearing spaces

Sometime a couple of months ago my house began talking to me, much the way my body does periodically when it is in need of some nurturing. The greatest gift of available time and space in my daily life is being able to stop, listen, and respond to those spiritual nudges and whispers that eluded me for so long as I forged ahead being busy and responsible and whatever else it is that I thought I was being....not dancing to my own drumbeat all too often (hell, I couldn't even find the drum) but jumping through hoops someone else arranged for me in some kind of hellish obstacle course of money, job, addiction, love, and all the other things the ego counts on for a little ratings boost.

The storage room has been where my shame has been stored for the past 12 years, since I moved in to this house post-divorce with my seventeen year old daughter, two huge dogs, and a couple of cats (as is true for many older people, they all blend together in my mind now in a collage of fluffys and bonkies and lizzys and sams). A number of large packing cartons went straight down to this room unopened and were lodged under the stairway on the cement floor, after which additional items accumulated around the room's edges, with shelving erected and boxes stacked, some overflowing as time went on.

Also added were lots of canvases and drawing pads from Annie's time in art school, my own art supplies from my fits and starts as a painter, bins of holiday sweaters, a gradually growing collection of Christmas stuff, boxes of books that I didn't know what to do with, and then, bins with items from my dead mother, items from my dead sister, brought home after funerals in the back of the car. I could see the old VCR tapes of my children's school concerts and our family vacations, books I read to them at night. I began to feel that there were the faintest stirrings of ghosts in that room: ghosts of my children, my family, my life.

Stinky the cat was a casualty of the move, maybe, and also of the revolving door of huge dogs that were a part of my household. Never a very outgoing cat, Stinky retreated more and more to the confines of that storage room, making a sort of home base under the stairs, way back in the corner, where she undoubtedly felt safe. Over time she began to reject the litter box in favor of that little corner. Attempts to bring her into the rest of the house were not very successful; though she tolerated a little snuggling it was obvious she was always anxious to run back into her little spot.

Although I tried to keep up with it, the storage room gained a life of its own, and eventually,

I just tried to pretend it wasn't there, but that corner of my house, the bottom corner, felt heavy and dark, thick, oppressive. Over the years I confided in friends about my shameful room and they always reassured me that everyone has a room or a garage or a basement like that. It was small consolation; it didn't comfort me to know this and my discomfort with that room lived with me in this house every day. I knew that this room represented much more than accumulated clutter; it was literally my baggage, an outward symbol of inner weight. Attempts to make a dent always failed. I began to relate to the poor souls on reality shows whose stuff begins to overtake them. I understood. This was my hoarder room, the sludge of my past swirling through it.

So, with Annie agreeing to help, I rented a dumpster, bought masks and gloves and a shop-vac and attacked. My idea was to throw those under-the-stairs boxes directly into the dumpster, but Annie insisted that every one of them be opened and its contents viewed. "I want you to see, Mom" she said, "that there are no ghosts in there."

And I did see. What was in those boxes? Mostly toys-Annie's extensive Barbie collection (houses, garages, soda shops, furniture, jeeps, corvettes...), childhood favorite toys, baseball mitts and cards, and lots of other tiny toys that made Annie squeal when she saw them. I saw my sophisticated daughter become a little girl again. It was joyful work.

We filled the dumpster, somehow, with I don't know what. It seems that these items disappeared from my memory in mid-air as we heaved them in. Piles of things to keep and things for the Goodwill truck emerged and later were relocated to new homes.

With the help of a great book about feng shui and clutter, I performed a space clearing ceremony, clapping in the corners to release the stagnant energy, burning incense, doing some yoga moves designed to flush out the old and invite in the fresh and new. It is important to remove jewelry and shoes and feel the space with outreached hands. Through them I could feel that the heaviness had lifted and the energy was now flowing. I am keeping the door open for the time being, enjoying inviting the room into the rest of my house and often wandering in just to stand there and feel that space embracing me and dancing around me. Annie was right about the ghosts.

Robert

It was Friday afternoon and I had just grabbed my bag off the turnstile and headed outside for a post-flight cigarette. Shivering a little in my denim jacket and already missing the warm breezes and hot sun of Palm Beach, I fumbled in my bag for my lighter near a concrete bench, when out of nowhere, I heard a voice and sensed a presence in front of me. I looked up to see a tall young man with his hand out. "Do ye have a cigarette?"

As I looked up, he added, "Is that ok to do in America?"

"Of course...."handing him a Virginia Slim and lighting him up, "we are friendly people here in America. Smokers always like to help each other out."

He took a deep drag and I sized him up...probably 34 or so, strawberry, close-cropped hair, a preppy vest and button-down shirt, khakis, a wardrobe bag over his shoulder, broad shoulders hunched against the Chicago wind.

Making conversation, the kind fellow smokers make in their little approved smoking areas when traveling, I asked him where he was from.

"Dublin....here for a wedding. And, fucking Lord (excuse me), I am so drunk! So fucking drunk, by the Christ. Can the TSA arrest me?" he asked with real concern.

I assured him that I didn't think so, unless he made a scene, but that he seemed ok to me.

Turns out he was in Chicago for a wedding. Turns out that he has a sister in Palm Beach. He told me his mother has red hair like me. Robert was the best part of my trip home.

I gave him a couple more cigarettes before I left and as I headed for the train hoped he would be ok finding a cab and making it to his hotel. This guy, drunk after nine hours on a plane and too many beers. I imagined that he was quite a hit on the plane. I imagined toasting and bawdy jokes. I regretted that I didn't think to take his picture.

I really love to travel. Besides drinking in the new sights, sounds and smells of a different place, there is always the random encounter with other beings who you will never meet again, who are strangers but in some way familiar, with connections to you, who remind you of someone, somewhere, a memory, a wish.

At Jensen Beach I tried out the telephoto lens of my camera on some gulls and other shore birds. One brave bird circled our blanket with his mouth open, looking for a handout. There he was, seemingly out of nowhere, hoping for something. Like Robert.

The Blanket

I first saw it on a trip to the antique mall last July.

The blanket was folded and hanging from the rung of an old ladder that was leaning against the wall of a booth in the back of the mall-a booth filled with old wooden tools, chairs and shutters. I was drawn to the color first-my favorite color, somewhere between a pink and a peach, a color I struggle to label. "Salmon" doesn't sound right, but "cinnamon" conjures a darker hue; at any rate, it was beautiful and soft and it drew me to it at a most visceral level. You had to touch it. I looked at the price tag: 48 dollars. It wasn't in the budget, especially in July, especially with my commitment to be mindful of every dollar: 48 dollars was a week of groceries, after all. Better to visit the blanket once in awhile and appreciate it without having to own it. I walked away that day and on several other days over the coming months, never removing it from the ladder rung and unfolding it, never daring to become more in love with it.

On New Year's Day, the antique mall had a big sale, and I returned, hoping that my blanket would be marked down. It was a festive occasion, with dedicated antiquers feasting on homemade treats laid out on tables, drinking coffee and feeling the comradarrie that always wells up when people of like interests gather. I walked straight to the back of the mall and it was still there. The sign on the booth said, "20% OFF", but the blanket's sign said, "FIRM" below the price. I removed the blanket from the rung and draped it over my arm, feeling the thrill of a successful stalk-and-win situation. If the booth's owner would give me the 20% off, I would finally buy it.

As i rounded the corner, a woman browsing with her husband noticed my treasure. She said, "Oh, I love that blanket. I have seen it here before. How lucky that you found it...I was going to go back and get it!" We admired its softness, beauty and pristine condition together for a few minutes before I moved on. A few steps later, another woman, younger, exclaimed, "that is my sister's blanket! She always talked about it!" Another woman, proprietor of another booth, joined us and chimed in, " I love that blanket! And, it is in such good shape! Did you look at it?"

We unfolded it together and held it up; we all cooed and smiled over the lovely design, which appeared with the colors reversed on the other side. It was, I realized, pristine indeed. The delicate blanket stitch around the edge was perfect and there were no stains or worn spots. I began to realize just what a find this blanket was through the eyes of the gathered admirers. I wondered why I had not thought to inspect it before, and I felt a silly sort of pride that it was going to be mine. When a worker asked if she could take the blanket to the register for me, I declined. I was not going to let that blanket leave my arms.

I never did barter with the blanket's owner. I paid full price and I paid it gladly.

I put the blanket on my bed and for the first time looked at the label delicately sewn on to one of the corners. It read, "Orr Health Blanet. The colors of this blanket were inspired by the Holland Tulip." So, a connection to my adopted home town of 40 years. Another sign that this was destiny, this was intended to be my blanket.

I have slept under this blanket on all of these cold winter nights. I have draped it over me while reading in bed. I have spread it out over the bed every morning, carefully smoothing out the wrinkles, my hand delighted by the thick, rich softness of the wool. I now know, through some online research, that it was made in about 1930. With its lack of wear, I imagine that someone got it for a wedding present and, thinking it too expensive a treasure for everyday use, put it in a chest or a closet. Too expensive to use, to fall in love with, to deserve to own. I understand that.

Therefore, tell me:
what will engage you?
What will open the dark fields of your mind,
like a lover
at first touching?

-from "Flare", by Mary Oliver

Weathering

Weathering

My face catches the wind
from the snow line
and flushes with a flush
that will never wholly settle.
Well, that was a metropolitan vanity,
wanting to look young forever, to pass.
I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty
and only pretty enough to be seen
with a man who wanted to be seen
with a passable woman.
But now that I am in love
with a place that doesn’t care
how I look and if I am happy,
happy is how I look and that’s all.
My hair will grow grey in any case,
my nails chip and flake,
my waist thicken, and the years
work all their usual changes.
If my face is to be weather beaten as well,
it’s little enough lost
for a year among the lakes and vales
where simply to look out my window
at the high pass
makes me indifferent to mirrors
and to what my soul may wear
over its new complexion.

–Fleur Adcock

Old Things

Wabi Sabi: Wabi ... connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, and can be applied to both natural and human-made objects, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object.Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear, or in any visible repairs.".....Wabi Sabi, from Wikipedia

I came across this concept in an article last night in one of those magazines whose mission it is to provide us with ways to cope with our lives and achieve some balance and peace. The author encourages the reader to abandon all attempts at perfection and embrace life's anomolies and flaws as the real essence of beauty; to cherish the inevitable evidence of wear, time and human limitations that we seem to wage war against every day. I thought of my aging face and body; I was just standing in front of an aisle full of "anti-aging" potions at the drugstore, reading labels and wondering, hoping against hope that some of them really would turn back the hands of time. Succumbing to these moments of vanity and insecurity is something we all do, and of course these products cash in on that. Our Western preoccupation with perfection keeps us anxiously wondering if we, and all that we have, are good enough.

My face is getting more unique as time goes by. My artificial eye is sinking in a little, not so that the casual observer would notice, but I can tell. Because it doesn't close all the way, I sleep with it pushed into my pillow, and the left side of my face bears the lines and wrinkles that have been pressed into it permanently. When I wear makeup, the watery discharge that comes from my fake eye smears it. My eyelashes stick out at a different angle because of the change in the shape of my eyeball. Add to this the consequences of a lifetime in the sun, smoking and general self-abuse, and you have the face of a somewhat leathery woman who looks older than her years. At least, this is what I see. Most days, I try to spend as little time as I can in front of the mirror, but when I am confronted with the idea of aging and beauty and my drift away from any hope of regaining my youthful symmetry and normalcy, it can be depressing. As I write this, I feel a little revulsion at my vanity and shallowness, but this is the truth of it. Not all of the time, you understand. But sometimes.

Back to wabi sabi-those of us who like to go to antique malls and find treasures with the ghosts of their former owners inherent in them know all about that...we run our hands over the soft patina of the back of the wooden chair, the color made lighter by so many hands doing the same thing. I toured an old country estate last weekend, and the staircase railing, made of brass, was shiny -bright at the base, where your hand would rest at the beginning of your climb. Likewise the knees of the huge Buddhas at the Art Institute. My old restaurant ware, discovered a piece or two at a time like rare wildflowers, has worn glaze from silverware and little imperfections in the green trim. My old Japanese chest, brought back from my ex-husband's brother during the Korean war, has many chips and dings along its edges from half a century of use. My favorite shoes are bent and molded uniquely, as only my feet could do, reflecting thousands of steps, some of them taken with people I love, others doing hard work, the feet inside thankful for their soft insides, holding them gently all the while. I could go on and on....old books, the paper covers long gone and the cloth of the bindings threadbare from many hands cradling them; the slightly undulating walls and creeky wooden floors of my old farmhouse; my grandmother's beautiful hands. All of these things contain, in their wear and their imperfections, the stories of the people who loved them. It is this that we treasure and value, because only the loving use of them could produce such beautiful uniqueness. It is my prayer that I can see my face with this kind of love.

Retirement

I woke up this morning wanting to write. it has been awhile since I have visited my blog and have thought of it often but been unable to settle on a topic or a way to express all that this life has brought to me in the past few months-if all of our experiences are there to teach us something, I have learned a few things this summer.

In June, I retired from West Ottawa Public Schools. All told, I taught in the public schools for 27 years, with about 3500 different kids sitting at my tables playing with clay or creating a painting.

I greeted classes of kids about 120,000 times over that period...in the early days, I arrived at their classrooms with my "art cart", and later, with the luxury of a real art room, they gathered on the carpet around my chair. I fired somewhere in the neighborhood of 33,000 clay pieces, hung at least that many carefully created paintings, drawings, collages and prints in the hallways of a dozen elementary schools. I scrubbed untold numbers of paint spills out of tee shirts and jeans, cleaned a million paint brushes, poured thousands of cups of ceramic glaze, cut enough construction paper to fill the gymnasium. I tied aprons around little bodies and fixed barrettes and tied shoes and wiped noses and found earrings and did all of the things that elementary teachers do. I will miss those things-I am sure I don't even know how much yet.

Retired teachers tell me that you don't really feel retired until the first day of school. This year, on that day, September 7, my friend Kathy (a teacher friend who also retired) and I will wake up on Mackinaw Island- the trip a gift from my colleagues at Waukazoo. For the first time in 27 years, I am not going back to an elementary school and greeting children.

What I am doing, however, is moving in to a little office space at Depree Art Center on Hope's campus, where I will meet with students and work on art education stuff. I will attend art department faculty meetings, go to the Kletz for coffee, work out at the Dow Center, and create a new work life for myself there. I teach a couple of courses: in the fall, one for elementary education students on how to use the arts in the classroom, and in the spring, an art methods course for art majors. I am excited to have more time for Hope and to be there, on campus, a part of the college life, a new place to belong now that I have left my beloved Waukazoo.

My other commitment is to the Holland Area Arts Council, where I am a volunteer and a board member. The executive director, Lorma Freestone, is an inspired and dedicated leader and I have had the pleasure of knowing her forever. I have a chance to put some things together for arts educators and kids there and it is a great place to work and use creative talents. I will share my love of art with people there and lend my back to the work that needs to be done.

I spent the summer with my son Jon, who just got his Masters of Architecture, finally, from Tulane, having been sidetracked for awhile after Katrina swept him over to Austin for awhile.

We spent a great deal of time at the beach, swimming in the warm waves and walking along the edge of the sand, reading, sleeping, playing cribbage. We worked on my house, which, like my body, was suffering from neglect, having an owner who was never home and when she was, she mostly collapsed on the couch and let the cobwebs and the weeds grow.

The house looks better, now, and so do I, responsive to care and nurturing as we all are. My teaching stuff is all in order in my home office. My closet is in order. As I have made space in my closets and drawers and cabinets by hauling what I no longer need to Goodwill, so have I made space in my life for rest, for dreaming, for writing, for art, for breathing slowly in, slowly out.