it was the first. the very first butterfly of this season. we both stopped to watch it as it freely flitted around the path in front of us. it felt like another harbinger of spring; maybe it’s really here. a few minutes later we stopped and sat for a few minutes. we didn’t talk; we just listened to the woods. the rest was soft and rejuvenating. the quiet was punctuated by birds and chipmunks. even a raccoon came out to wander. we got back up, ready for more hiking.
i distinctly remember a day i sat in the front yard. it was summer and, just like chicken marsala in this chicken nugget, there was a butterfly that came to light on my hand. it circled around and came back, landing on my knee, my foot. it felt like a message to me, a reinforcement to quietly sit in the sun.
this world is full of chaos and confusion, deadlines and worries. looking at the furrows lining people’s brows, it is obvious that we don’t take enough time to just rest, just sit, just soak in new energy, just let butterflies lead the way. good things will come.
when i wrote and recorded THAT MORNING SOMEDAY (you can hear it below) it was wistfully about any beginning…any beautiful or cloud-striated sunrise…any hopefulness…any new day. my big brother had died and i was yearning for the peace of understanding, a feeling of being ok in the world, a wish to wake up to something that had given order to chaos.
many many years later, i can’t honestly say that i always have the peace of understanding or a feeling of being ok in the world and i often wish to wake up to something that has given order to chaos. someday is still out there.
only now, a little older and the tiniest smidge wiser, i realize someday is waiting too long. someday is right now and i am sitting right in it, with lots of time behind me and, hopefully, lots of time in front of me. the only thing that really counts right now is right now.
i yearn to make it more peaceful than my last moment. i step in the world, ok or not. i try to help create order out of chaos. maybe someday it will all come together. but in the meanwhile, i will do the best i can in right now.
when i see images of mountains these days, i naturally think about kirsten and becky. The Girl is living the out-in-the-high-mountains life and the photographs she sends me are nothing short of stunning. i love every moment i spend out there, so i can appreciate wholeheartedly her finding her “place”.
when i was little, we used to go to the mountains in upstate new york. my sweet momma and poppo would rent a cabin in a state park and we would travel up there; they would always allow me to take a friend – most of the years this was susan. i was the youngest by FAR (haha! are you reading this, seester?) so i was the only one left in the house. i was always thrilled to have my siblings’ families with us as well. my nieces and nephew were adorable. plus heather was the perfect foil on the mountainside beaches (and long island beaches as well); as a toddler she flirted with every cute boy around every time i took her there. she was with me a lot as a little girl; i took her everywhere in my little vw bug, especially in the summer. nothing like a little girl who would seemingly deliberately throw the frisbee onto the next blanket where a cute boy was sitting and listening to his transistor radio. what a fun way to meet ‘people’. wink!
later in life, my parents rented condos in the mountains of tennessee and the whole family joined them there. sunsets behind the big deck of the clubhouse, shrimp boils in the field, frisbee and hiking. those are treasured memories.
this image MOUNTAIN IN YELLOW SKY reminds me of every good mountain memory. its warmth, its simplicity. both appeal to me. the really funny thing is that this is just a mere morsel of one of david’s paintings. the painting TOGETHER ON THE BEACH is where i found this and extracted it to create a whole new image. when i asked david where i could find this canvas in the studio the other day, he told me he had painted over it. what?! what was he thinking?! fortunately, i still have the image i took of it and have created a canvas art print of that painting and a close-up of it as well.
MOUNTAIN IN YELLOW SKY…just a little piece of TOGETHER ON THE BEACH. both simple. both dreamy. both beautiful.
there is a dog biscuit on the floor in the laundry room in the basement. i was about to put laundry in the washer when i saw it. “hmmm…” i thought. “what is a dog biscuit doing down here?” i wondered. our courageous dog has never ever been in the basement. he dislikes stairs. he is an aussie and, well, if you know any aussies, you know that they have interesting….issues. one of his, apparently, is that he doesn’t do tight stairwells. so, knowing this, i am aware that dogdog did not bring a dog biscuit to the basement. (not to mention the fact that had he had a dog biscuit in his mouth he would have consumed it.)
so. the mystery. i can only assume that one of the mice we seem to have accommodated this winter carried this downstairs for a later snack. when i picture a mouse carrying a milkbone i’m amazed by its tenacity – it had to be under tremendous stress with its milkbone-burden. and…where did it get its milkbone from? we have a tray with dogdog’s “cookies” in the kitchen; i shudder to think of a mouse sitting there evaluating which cookie to steal. and…furthermore…there are no mouse…ummm….poopies (as i call them) anywhere nearby. what to think….
by looking at the tiny bites off of dogdog’s cookie in the basement, i think that mice will go to great lengths for a snack. i guess.
jen and brad have been taking dance lessons for months. their daughter is getting married in a couple of weeks and they want to celebrate-dance under the warm savannah night sky at her reception. they have been dedicated to this; their lessons are top priority in their social calendar. from what we can see, their commitment has morphed from we-need-to-be-able-to-dance-well-together to we-love-this-together. what a gift to see them in their kitchen demonstrating the cool steps they have learned. they are getting polished and are more and more comfortable with various dances (especially “the push-pull,” jen explains.) mostly, they look like they are really having fun. truth be told, we don’t know of anything they have committed to that they haven’t thrown their whole hearts into; they are a picture of enthusiasm. they are a joy in our life.
on the other hand, we will look like bumbling-dancers under this same georgia sky. but that’s not the point. it is rare that you will be the center of attention when you are dancing – only a few times you are a bride and groom or the parents of or in a do-they-give-booby-prizes? dance competition. but we love to dance together. before our wedding, under linda’s (an absolute lover of all dance) tutelage, we learned an irish waltz that will remain one of the stunning moments of our reception in the old southport beachhouse. what happy dance took place that afternoon and night.
i remember many a day or night blissfully dancing with one of my babies in my arms. i even remember dancing around the living room solo or holding babycat. sometimes that was out of delight; sometimes it was in the search for joie de vivre, a yearning for cheer.
we have danced in the front yard, on the deck, in the kitchen in the middle of the night, in church and in airports. it matters not where you dance. as long as you dance. there is wisdom in dancing.
wendy (aka saul aka ben) and i have this thing about unicorns. well, unicorns and bubbles and rainbows. i can’t look at any of those without thinking about her. individually we look especially for unicorn “stuff” for each other; those tend to be small gifts we send from time to time. i have a unicorn calendar that offers pretty straight-ahead advice each day, without mincing words. i have unicorn socks. i have a stuffed unicorn on my piano in my studio. my new favorite unicorn thing is a white plastic stretch unicorn pen she sent me for my birthday…hard to explain…a unicorn with a rainbow mane that looks a lot like a dachshund and is a pen. yep, too much information. you are probably thinking i am too ‘old’ for unicorns, but i beg to differ. one is never too old for unicorns. they are happy and free and magical. plus, as a person who has been horse-crazy since girlhood, anything that even vaguely resembles a horse gets my vote.
d often tells me that i have a wild imagination. that works against me as well as for me. i will imagine all sorts of things – both good and bad. sometimes this is an opportunity; i often find myself imagining things, ideas or plotting while i am blowing my hair dry (this seems to be a time of increased-imagination-activity for me.) or i will be off and running in my imagination on long drives or walking in the woods. sometimes this imagining thing can make you nervous, making up stuff before it even happens. but the word imagine conjures up many things for me. john lennon’s song ‘imagine’ or mercy me’s song ‘i can only imagine’. both have beautiful lyrics; both imagine places and experiences of great beauty and and grace and goodness.
one day when d was drawing our chicken marsala i asked him to include a unicorn. “for wendy,” i said. we decided on the words “give full rein to your imagination” to go along with this drawing of chicken and his unicorn. but when i was designing the cartoon nugget, i added the word “reign”….it felt right. after all, what could be the worst thing if we all let our imaginations be sovereign? if we imagined a world of peace and harmony and rainbows and bubbles. and yes, maybe even people on unicorns wearing creativity-tiaras. full reign.
our dog has separation anxiety. he doesn’t cry and whine while we are gone (that we know of) but he gets this incredibly sad why-do-you-want-to-leave-me?? look on his face (see: the dad on my big fat greek wedding) when we get ready to leave to go. anywhere. we feel compelled to tell him, “church. we are going to church.” or “errands. we are going on errands.” (and then we feel we have to explain to our dog-who-loves-to-go-on-errands that it’s too cold in the car for him to wait during this particular set of errands.) we have this running dialogue while we are out, joking about how he is asking babycat if we are “everrrrr coming back” to which babycat sneers at him and calls him names, reminding him that we come back every single time. well, at least we are amusing ourselves.
i have separation anxiety. (ask my children.) but i’m not writing about that kind of separation anxiety. it is about the paintings i have fallen in love with leaving our studio. it’s crazy. that’s the whole point of paintings – to be placed where someone will commune with it and draw from it and love it (like me.) as we continue our virtual gallery sale, i find myself thinking about each of these paintings to which i feel so attached.
and i know that i have to let go. and hope for as many paintings to have-to-leave-us as possible for, as artists, this is how we make a living, this is how we pay our bills, this is how we make a tiny impact in our little corner of the world.
i truly wish for each of you who have pondered an original painting or have purchased one – no matter where you have done so – to be just as in love with it as i feel about david’s.
heidi and i performed together for years at innumerable oncology and cancer survivor events. heidi is a breast cancer survivor and speaker and we wove her spoken words and my songs or instrumental music into performances of celebration, of gratitude, of honoring…performances we cherished together.
heidi would speak of a lazy river she had been in. how, without doing anything, you just become part of the river…tubing on a slow river is like that. no real thought, just meandering in the flow. like life, it’s easier when you don’t fight the currents.
there is something, for me, about gathering riverstones. we gave them to everyone at our wedding – to mark that each person is part of the river of our life. these beautiful riverstones – the way water created a smoothness on rock…years of the flow has worn down the rough edges, made a beautiful patina. i’m hoping, maybe, i’ll be just like that.
reverse threading 