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.

whenever I am feeling like I'm in a race for the finish line, i know that the place to put my eyes is on the things I am rushing past to get there.

nobody knows why the blues take hold of you, but I have them.

I can't seem to write anything that seems like the truth but doesn't seem like self-pity, so I am not writing anything. I am sitting in the fire these days, trying to stay conscious, staying with what comes. driving through the fog with the high beams on.

talking to my trusted spiritual guide today, who tells me something he heard:

the anecdote to exhaustion is not always rest. instead, it may be wholeheartedness.

somehow, the heart is not invested in life today. i will welcome the return of my passion. I look forward to the return of the energy that eludes me now; to feel that pulse again running through me. the trick here is not to reach for ways to jumpstart artificially-through substance abuse to deaden and distract, through falsely engaging in communication just to avoid being alone, through telling a story about myself or others today that provides a temporary answer for the why of it. To just stay with it as it comes, ride through, ignore thoughts, heed heart, seek no other remedy.

I have spent much of my life listening to everyone but myself, but at this moment I hear.

I hear the soothing, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, beautiful sounds of the blues.

st joe

My dad took a lot of pictures of us. An accomplished amateur photographer, he had a dark room down in the basement that I have written about before on this blog, and he often had camera in hand. I have boxes of slightly curled, shiny pictures of all different sizes that were produced in the Hayes Photolab, a name he stamped on the back of them before distributing to friends and family. There are hundreds of them. I remember putting them on the photo dryer, a large, two-sided contraption with flat surfaces upon which the wet photos were laid. Then, a canvas cover was pulled tightly over them. You rotated the machine and carefully removed the images when they dried. They always wound up curly on the edges. This was the work of the "dry man", as my dad called it, and was not as important as the work of the "wet man", which you had to graduate to: actually developing the prints in the chemicals and then throwing them on the "bath" was the part I loved most. I also loved running the finished prints upstairs to show my mother, who was usually in her chair, dog on lap, with a mystery novel of some sort. She would carefully put the bookmark in, close the book and look at each picture as I chattered about all that went into their creation. She must have looked at thousands of pictures during my childhood, and yet, if she was bored, she never showed it.

We are leaning against our '58 Ford station wagon that was two-toned, red and white. I named her Beauty Glamour on the day my dad drove her home and adored that car over all others we ever owned ( a considerable number, in that my dad was a confirmed car officianado and his best friend Lee was a Ford dealer). Beauty Glamour had red leather seats, and I liked to think that my dad picked that car out for me, because he used to say I was "especially made for red."

It might be early spring, like it is now, the sun warm and intoxicating on our faces, our little jackets, no doubt carefully picked out my our mother, buttoned against the still-cold winds that blow through Michigan at will. It is morning, because my braids are still neat and tidy, as my mother braided them, one and then the other, sitting on the bar stool, cigarette in ash tray, mug of coffee with cream, lipstick print on the edge in cherry red. My sister is carrying her Tiger and, as is so often the case, looks delighted to see my dad and his camera. My brother scrunches his face as if stifling a giggle. Maybe my dad said something silly or irreverant ("Say shit!") to get us to laugh. We are happy kids, well-loved, and it is spring in the sun.

Click.

picasso