reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Category Archives: DR thursday


by 1 Comment

the people with pompoms. [d.r. thursday]

and, in the miracle of the universe unfolding as it should, there was first fruit. i have to admit to my heart swelling just a bit. i peeked into the leaves of our two tomato plants and was astounded. many tiny fruit – little green orbs – had appeared, seemingly overnight. once again, we were going to experience the thrill of tiny-farming, a container garden on our old barnwood potting stand. just off the deck, tucked up next to the fence, canopied by the climbing ivy and right in the chipmunk trail to the birdfeeder, we were experiencing success. we are proud parents. and last night, as i snipped off fresh basil for our red pesto, i blew kisses, waving virtual pompoms, to these baby cherry tomatoes and encouraged them to keep on keeping on.

sunday morning we awoke to a flurry of activity on our blogs. with our coffee mugs in hand, we could see that hundreds of people were suddenly visiting certain posts and we ascertained that our favorite wander women had shared the cartoon and corresponding blogposts we had written with great pride about them. and – in a fun moment that was even better than hearing your name on the romper-room-mirror-out-there-i-see moment, they mentioned us on their video. we’ve watched every single one of their backpacking youtubes, their triple crown achievement, their biking, their supply lists, their rv-ing, their musings about aging and planning and adventure. nothing short of inspiring, we’ve talked about them a bit…ok, more than a bit. we shared with them the cartoon we drew, wanting them to know we are among the giant fan group they have, cheering them on as they are getting outside in the world. and then they shared our words. mutual pompoms.

there is power in sharing, power in being proud enough of, inspired enough by something to cheer it on. there is power in rooting for that which someone else is going after. it’s a synergistic power…back and forth and back and forth. kind of like how all cheering-on works. we encourage, we nurture, we are encouraged, we are nurtured. i found a note from my sweet momma recently. just a scrap of paper. on it she had written, “i know you can do it.” pompoms.

every new adventure – every fresh start – every launch – every foray – new fruit. vulnerable to the chipmunks – and much bigger monsters – but stalwart anyway. a few coffee grounds around the tomatoes will help deter those crazy chippies. we have plenty of coffee grounds. easy peasy.

i’m guessing the coffee will help with everything else too.

that and the people with pompoms.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

HELPING HANDS
53.5″ x 15.25″


by Leave a comment

right now and love. [d.r. thursday]

barney had an anniversary. seven years in our backyard. seven years of sun and rain and snow and ice. seven years of chipmunks and squirrels and robins and cardinals. seven years of wild geranium and day lilies and peonies and potted plants and candles. seven years of intense love. some things are unexpected. i still remember the beginning.

but barney’s influence on us has been significant. as he has aged, grayed, wrinkled, as his layers have peeled back and as his many-wooden-layered sedimentary life has undergone a metamorphosis, so have ours. we have gone the road with barney.

there are moments we glance over, in early morning light or the dim of dusk, and are taken aback at the beauty of this old piano in our yard. i can’t imagine it not being there, even as it gently lists a little left, into the ground.

same as those moments, in early morning light or the dim of dusk, that we glance over at each other. a little bowled over by the sheer presence of the other. the moment-ness, the what-else-is-there-ness, startling us into awareness. time keeps marching on and little counts but the chipmunks scurrying, the birds landing, the sun on our faces.

i got a single text from our girl. i read a post from our boy. they are in their own skins; they are making their way too, upright pianos in the backyard, living their best lives.

it’s a hot night. we sit on the cushions we bought last year – after long, measured research and budgeting – and light our column firepit.

the flame dances in the breeze. and it frames barney.

and reminds us – simply – that right now and love are what count.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY


by Leave a comment

some fun. [d.r. thursday]

we cleaned the garage. now, this is not my favorite chore. there are spiders in the garage. lots of them. and they peer out at me, lurking, waiting for me to walk by, so that they can drop down a line and swing right in front of my face. their decibel-tolerance for closed-mouthed-screams must be vast, for they elicit many of these from me as they plot and scheme, surprising me.

regardless, we cleaned the garage.

david went in first, broom held in front of him, sweeping as he stepped. in a gallant move, he tried to clear the way for me. his heroics helped; there were fewer surprises as we worked.

our garage is old – like our house – and nails are pounded into the exposed 2x4s to hold bagchairs and hoses and the bike pump and various gardening tools. in one of my best organizing-learnings about a decade back, there is an old tall plastic garbage can in the corner which holds things like shovels and rakes and a fence-post-hole-digger and a metal thing i can’t identify but which seems important. there are two bikes hanging from the ceiling. and up above on wood laying across the rafters, like a mini attic, there is a red tricycle (pause for an “awww”), an old red wagon (repeat), a few old doors and a rooftop turtle that has a big dent in it from when – a few decades ago – we drove into a parking garage late at night forgetting it was up there on top of the bronco. oopsies.

like anything else i do, it was a time of revisiting stories.

the best thing in the garage is the volkswagen. our 1971 super beetle is tucked in, while littlebabyscion and big red suffer the elements. tenure counts here.

we finished cleaning, triumphantly and without any horror, and sat on the deck with a gorgeous saturday afternoon stretching out in front of us. i poured two glasses of white wine and brought out a snack, some brown paper bags, scissors, a few rocks and some paint. time to have some fun.

because we have been the grateful recipients of gift-rocks-on-the-trail we decided to leave some of our own. story of our lives, come to find out there are better tools for this than the ones we had. we had dollar store paint and brushes. those didn’t work. we moved on to david’s good acrylic paints from his studio and the dollar store brushes. these worked better, but didn’t yield precise lines. we found out later that there are real live paint pens – ones you can paint rocks with. they draw precise lines and tiny little scenes. (well, you draw them, they just make it all a possibility.) we’re going to get us some of those, i say.

in the meanwhile, our rough-hewn works of rock-art will have to do.

the next day, we hid the first round of rocks the first time we walked the loop on our trail. by the second time around, some of them were gone. i guess rough-hewn was acceptable.

i can’t wait to see what we do with paint pens.

my first rockwork

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

CHASING BUBBLES 33″x48″: this painting of glee is available.
©️ 2019 david robinson


by Leave a comment

and the grass grew. [d.r. thursday]

every time we drive south we go through that town. a quintessential midwest tiny city, highland park has shops, restaurants, galleries, parks, clean green space. everywhere there are signs posted about kindness and responsibility and community. i’ve played at and attended art fairs in that town, eaten pizza in that town, strolled and window-shopped in that town.

we had already decided not to go to the fireworks on monday. we threw on shorts and t-shirts and went for a hike in the later morning, not sure what else the day would hold. we expected it to be peaceful. we expected it to be relaxing.

it was neither.

we returned home and, within a few minutes, learned that less than an hour away, in this town we always choose to travel through on the back roads to chicago, to the botanic garden, to crate and barrel, to anywhere south, the horrific had happened. it changed everything about the day. if i had to draw a mark in the sand, it would be there. at the moment we learned the unexpected had occurred, that people celebrating independence were no longer breathing because someone had sniped them during a norman rockwell fourth of july parade, the kind where bikes with streamers and strollers gather on the sidewalk and people sit on the curb clapping and watching their children’s faces light up with glee, their hands sticky with ice cream popsicles.

the moment tipped the balance for us. again. gun violence. we did not expect to be weeping, feeling like we are held hostage by politicians who insist that guns are more important than lives, feeling like there is nowhere safe. we expected to take a walk in our own neighborhood, perhaps wander to the waterfront in the daylight to see the festivities. but it was daylight in highland park.

we expected there to be fireworks in the neighborhood. it’s not unusual. but they were frenetic and close and we could see the reflection of explosions on our house as the back neighbors set off one after another. the loud booms and cracks scared dogdog. we closed up the house – all the windows and shades – despite having no air conditioning – and tried to console him. and a bit later, even as the thunderous thunder and lightning pummeled our ‘hood, the fireworks all around us continued. i was still awake at 2, listening to them through closed windows. we did not expect that level of frenzy. it seemed feverish.

the day was fraught. without a party to attend, with no gathering to gather at, with family and friends scattered, we expected to enjoy a low-key day. instead, we found ourselves in littlebabyscion driving past a creepy house located on the path to our trail, remembering that, on our way back from the trail, with an appropriate amount of time to arrive there from a devastated highland park, there had been a car matching the description of the vehicle the shooter-on-the-loose was driving, wondering if that car would still be in the abandoned house’s driveway, a driveway in which we had never seen a car before. it wasn’t there and there was no way of knowing what the license plate was nor if it had anything to do with the day’s events. it was just suspicious enough to make us go look, to try and help if we could. we couldn’t shake it.

we didn’t expect our fourth of july to be turbulent. but it was.

the people of highland park didn’t expect their fourth of july to change the course of their lives. but it did.

there were eleven mass shootings on july 4th alone. one of them was in our town.

and the grass in the front yard grew.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

IN PRAYER mixed media 67″x64″

IN PRAYER ©️ 2014 david robinson


by Leave a comment

it’s not the spiders. [d.r. thursday]

i don’t know when it started.

maybe the day – when i was about fourteen – when i was laying in bed, having just awakened. i was on my back and curled next to me was my sweet miniature-collie-german-shepherd-mix missi. before jumping up to get out of bed i opened my eyes and stretched. dangling right above my face – merely inches away – was a gigantic spider. gigantic: of monumental proportion.

stifling a scream, not wanting to open my mouth, i limbo-ed my way out of bed, my eyes fixed on that spider. once out, i ran down the hall to the kitchen, never thinking about the fact that it was likely crawling on my pillow after my departure.

needless to say, i have a thing about spiders.

i don’t like them.

this may be problematic as we thru-hike some day. i’ll have to wave my trekking poles in front of me as we hike. and i’m not sure what i will do in our tent. i’ve camped before, though it has been a while. and my fear-of-spiders has grown through the years. i must have spider-trauma.

the first years i taught school in florida, my classroom was a small building they called “the music shed”. it was tucked into a swampy area of the school campus and they didn’t mention, on the day of my hiring, the banana spider population lurking inside that little building. inches across, these are not for the faint of heart. he brought a shop-vac one day to rid the room as best he could, but every day part of my attention was always looking for something moving – on the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling, on my desk, in the cabinets. just writing this post makes me feel a little squirrely.

so when this big ole spider was walking on the bedroom screen the other day (fortunately, on the other side of the screen) i flicked at it and was relieved to see it gracefully fall and scurry off.

i suppose there are many people who are afraid of spiders. we all try our best to avoid them, even as spiders have virtually no interest in us. they are just going about their business, unlike mosquitoes, who are seeking us out, to torture us. i read that most spiders are as harmless as ladybugs and goldfish. somehow those don’t terrify vast numbers of people.

but spiders, like snakes, get a bad rap. we think of them, creatures that do their best to get away from us, as scary and dangerous. while in reality, it’s the mosquitoes and ticks and no-see-ums and mites, stalking us, that should be the target of our ire, their elimination our focus.

funny how that works. pests quietly, deliberately, going about making our lives miserable. there, often unnoticed, often underplayed. eating away at our comfort, the freedom of our existence, bringing disease.

i don’t know why this makes me think of today’s political arena.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

visit DAVID’S online gallery

EARTH INTERRUPTED: NEWSWORTHY 50.25″ X 41″
©️ 2017 david robinson


by Leave a comment

slow, slow. turtling. [d.r. thursday]

though unable to sprint away, the turtle knows when to withdraw. the beautiful wizened face peeks out from under the shell and i don’t want to scare it, though it is likely i already have. the black iris stripe, always parallel to the horizon, the water’s surface, highlights its beautiful eyes, yellow-green peering at me. the marks on its shell tell tales we won’t know. we don’t pick it up or move it; there is no road danger for this turtle as we are in the woods and, by the trail it has left in the grasses, it seems to have a deliberate destination.

these years seem turtling years. pulling in, sheltering from the outside, moving slowly, slowly. in light of all that has transpired through the last couple years, i have not minded turtling. it is renewing strength, re-prioritizing, revitalizing humor, stoking up energy. the pandemic has forced this inwardness; this place has been our shell, reassuring, comforting. even with all the zeal i have for adventure, i love being home. there will be a different time. time will pass and seasons will change and the river keeps flowing. nothing is static. my eyes focus on the horizon.

the turtle paused in its trekking as i took its picture. it looked out from under its own fortress-home and whispered smart-turtle-wisdoms, grinning at me, “just keep going. wherever you go, there you are. you carry home with you. keep your eyes on the horizon. slow, slow.”

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

NAP acrylic 36×48

browse DAVID’S gallery

previous thoughts on turtles…click here


by Leave a comment

the rockwalk. [d.r. thursday]

i don’t know how much i noticed the rock garden next to the chalet shed in the backyard of my growing-up house. i know it was there. there were plants peeking out from in-between the rocks and the garden-pile grew through the years as my momma – with a love of rocks and stone – added to it.

the cairns and vessel-collections in our house echo that garden and its solid base for my own love of rocks and stone and pebbles. though i believe i will remember where each individual rock originates, where i picked it up, what it means to me or what moment it represents, reality is that i forget. with a few exceptions, i simply know that they are important. they were part of something i wanted to hold onto. and they became part of the rock garden of my life. they all count.

the rockway of the shoin house of the chicago botanic garden is deliberate. carefully placed stones, “bones of the earth” form a pathway through the fragile mosses of deep green. we stood, gazing down, both of us – i’m pretty sure – lost in thought about how we could incorporate such a walkway in our own backyard. orderly and stunning and functional, protecting all around it.

we spent a couple hours in the basement last night. i heard them from a distance first; the tornado sirens were going off. then, closer. i am storm-nervous. the derecho back a decade has gifted me with long-term storm ptsd and i’m not sure if there is much i can do to alleviate it. so when the weather forecast offers “tornado watch” i get ready.

we created a go-bag during the riots in our city a couple years back. it was recommended. i also keep an empty backpack nearby for computers and cords. there’s a leash in the go-bag and we have a duffel with a few clothes. i didn’t unpack all this after those devastating riots. instead, we realized the wisdom of having important stuff nearby, things you can grab in an emergency. and so, i had this all lined up – like a good rockwalk – on the couch in the sitting room off our bedroom, waiting. d picked up the dog (who doesn’t do steps for some strange aussie reason) and i grabbed the bags and water and some dog treats.

when you think about tornadoes as you sit in the basement listening, you realize that you can only create so much order…you can only try to design a walkway…you can only make plans. sitting in two rocking chairs in d’s studio, surrounded by the bins i am emptying and clearing down there, a couple dehumidifiers turned off so we could hear, with our backpacks and duffel bag, it all comes down to, well, not much. chaos happens and we find ourselves in it, stepping, trying to find our way on the rockwalk, to the other side, the next sunrise.

we waited for the sirens to stop and for the weather app to show that the worst of it had passed over us. david carried dogga back up and he got another sleepynightnight cookie. the bags went back on the couch, lined up, things to put away in the morning.

i wanted pancakes but it was too late and we were too tired.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

browse DAVID’S gallery


by Leave a comment

on the curb. [d.r. thursday]

you can put most anything at the curb and it will soon disappear. scrappers are on the prowl looking for metal and old appliances, big and small, things that might be repurposed, things that might be tinkered with and sold.

when i put out these three wrought-iron candlesticks i included a sign. i measured the heights and jotted them on the sign that indicated they were candlesticks. i was hoping someone who really wanted some taper holders to jaunt by and find them on our parkway. i didn’t want them to go to scrap.

david said that he saw the person pull up and examine the sign and the bag of candlesticks and that this person gently placed it in the back of his truck, so i’m crossing my fingers he brought them home and showed his partner, suggesting they eat by taper or relax in the evening to the glow of candles. i guess a girl can hope.

because we don’t generally do big giant things, we tend to celebrate the little stuff. this past friday evening was one of those times. right after he finished work, on an absolutely beautiful late afternoon, we got into littlebabyscion and drove south. as is our way, we took the backroads, arriving at the botanic garden, happy to see the parking lot meagerly parked.

we strolled through slowly, arm in arm, talking and quiet. we only had about an hour and a half till its close, but it was an hour and a half of lovely. it shushed our minds and its serenity was contagious.

we drove home the back way, through a few small towns with bistro tables on the sidewalks and people gathered, eating and sipping wine. we pondered stopping and having a bite outside, but continued home to make our own small meal and sip wine under happy lights in our sunroom with our dogga by our side. it was a peaceful way to start the weekend.

you don’t have to lift every little thing, but we have learned it makes a difference. the tiny things – a candle burning, a strand of happy lights, a quiet walk, sniffing peonies in a garden, admiring the wild columbine in the woods, stopping to watch a deer glide across someone’s front yard – these things matter.

you don’t have to be there for each other each moment, but we have learned it makes a difference. the tiny things – helping the other up off the floor after painting shoe moldings, bringing the other a steaming mug of coffee in a tired-time, clinking the day’s accomplishments, crying with the other’s pain – these things matter.

in one of her books, joyce maynard wrote, “when a person gave less, he required less in return.” i suppose life could be easier that way, more centric, simpler. one would not have to notice stuff or do much of anything for another. the give-and-take of relationship would be low-bar and that might work for some.

but time and life have taught me a few lessons, some much harder than others. one is that apathy and paying attention are absolute opposites, particularly in relationship.

we’re putting apathy on the curb.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

dancing in the front yard 24″x24″


by Leave a comment

and then, the feral. [d.r. thursday]

in my recollection, my sweet momma didn’t buy flats of flowers with the arrival of spring. my mom and dad didn’t run nursery to nursery purchasing new shrubbery or plants to add to the gardens around our home. they didn’t pore over landscaping catalogs nor research shade and sun preferred plantings. though it didn’t occur to me then, i realize now – and empathize – that they couldn’t afford it.

the half-acre piece of long island on which i grew up was beautiful and natural and serene. along one side of the house – a little bit shady – were four-o-clocks and bleeding hearts. along the other side were hosta. in the front corner and along the side where the neighbors-who-had-the-nice-weimaraner lived there were forsythia. on the other side where the neighbors-who-had-the-weimaraner-who-bit-me lived there were rose of sharon. we had rhododendron and i can’t remember what else in the front garden. but they all came back; they were perennials. because anything annual, well, i don’t think that was in the budget.

and so i guess i have come by it honestly. it wasn’t a “thing” when i grew up to run out and purchase – before anyone else picked them all over – flats of this year’s preferred annual flowers. it wasn’t a “thing” to plant hanging baskets and wooden barrels or giant clay pots with flowers for the season. it was expensive then and it’s expensive now. i learned early to appreciate the simplest garden, the natural setting of a woods, the reassuring return of perennials you have nurtured and which, likely, came from cuttings someone else gifted to you.

when i first moved to wisconsin, it was a full-impact moment when may arrived and everyone was talking about the flowers they would plant. friends and neighbors would dance gracefully into planting season and the ballet seemed a bit foreign, a bit out-of-reach. the quietly-popular greenhouses were divulged to me; i purchased a small trowel and got to it. impatiens and waxed begonia and petunia flats later, to no avail i had tried to avoid the pressure. each year posed the angsty question of color – for there are trends, i found, obvious by the missing palettes at the nurseries.

my momma and my dad loved their garden. they loved their indoor plants as well. and, when they planted vegetables out back next to – but far enough away from – the dog run, they loved those too. mostly, they loved the trees canopying our house and yard, the woods out back, the tiny lily-of-the-valley next to the old shed. i never heard them utter a peep wishing for more. i never felt – growing up – that i had missed out, not having new flowers or plants each year.

yet, here i was – i am – living in a place and time where that seems to be of vital importance. and i have wondered why this urge, this spring-flower-purchasing-extravaganza doesn’t come naturally to me. i know it’s not because i don’t love flowers.

we walk and hike through the woods. no matter whether the forest trail takes us into the mountains or along the low elevation of a river in the midwest, we notice the floor of greenery, the flowers growing wild, color and shape, exquisite all.

once again this year – like last – we won’t purchase annual flowers. the plants we will add for our summer will be cherry tomato plants, basil, lemongrass, perhaps lavender. we will appreciate the tenacity of our hosta and our ferns, the spreading wild geranium, the stubborn return of our daylilies, the tender peonies, our aspen sapling, the ever-present grasses. we cheer on the groundcover sally gave us and the groundcover sneaking under the fence in its every-year attempt to take over the garden. we celebrate the simplicity and wish that our front yard – in its water-main-replacement-utter-mess – wouldn’t require neat and tidy grass replacement, a huge and costly job to remove old sod and stray cement poured from the temporary sidewalks and various strewn deposits of rubber and metal and rocks.

my sweet momma and dad adored the yard of my growing-up home. they didn’t pass on to me the necessity of more. instead, they passed on to me an embracing of simplicity, gratitude for what-we-have and the appreciation of other gardens – friends’, neighbors’, public botanic celebrations of gorgeousness. they passed on the love of feral forests of jack-in-the-pulpit and the crowning glory of trillium.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

visit DAVID’S online gallery


by Leave a comment

not-still-life. [d.r. thursday]

there is a gold frame around the old black and white photograph. a still life of a family. it was taken in the 1920s and it captures the still-life of my sweet poppo’s family…at that very moment: his dad, his mom, his brothers and sisters as young children and babies.

i don’t have another like it; there is not another portrait – at least not in my collection of photos – that has both his biological parents and all his brothers and sisters. my dad lost his mom to metastasized breast cancer when he was merely eight years old. my grandpa married a woman – the only paternal grandmother i knew – who was willing to take on six growing children. life was not still.

in the way that families sometimes splinter, my dad’s family lost touch after the death of my grandparents. there was some rift and there were plenty of hurt feelings and, then, there was silence. i grew up the rest of my life without my cousins, without sharing in their stories, without the chance to know them or love them. it was like the still-life-portrait was carefully cut up and only my dad was left.

one of my uncles had drowned in the swimming hole in upstate new york during their teenage years. another uncle was lost at sea during the war. i think my third uncle passed somewhere along the way maybe in brooklyn, where they all grew up, as did one of my aunts, a fun-loving californian who always went by her nickname. and the aunt who had children – who would be my first cousins, wished for but lacking in my own circles – was in new england.

a couple years ago – after i broke my wrists – when i was sitting with casts and a laptop and the pandemic had just begun, i decided to google them. i wrote a bit about finding them – a golden moment of connection. suddenly, through research and social media and, unfortunately, posted obituaries, i discovered two of my four cousins.

i reached out, one on either coast. they reached back. and the ripped pieces of portraits that could have been taken through the years began to assemble. tiny bits of photo paper, a little glue, stories to be told.

my dad – on the other side but not too far away – smiled when i had my first conversation with his sister, my aunt. he no longer remembered the details of whatever the rift was and, besides, it was a ridiculous fifty years prior. how long does one hold onto these kinds of things?

my aunt, with a touch of brooklyn and a touch of boston, told me stories and i really pined to meet her, to hug my dad’s sister, to hear of my dad as a youngster, to sit with her. but covid and fragile health sadly combined to prevent this.

my cousin called while we were driving to the grocery store. he told me that earlier in the morning his momma, my 99-year-old-would-have-been-100-in-three-months-aunt helen, had died. once again, the still-life photo shattered. i would not capture a picture of us together, our jowls matching, perhaps our eyes, perhaps the curve of our faces. i watched her service online yesterday, trying to memorize the smiles and tears of my lost-now-found relatives.

i’m grateful for the brief conversations and the fact that she knows i looked for her, for her children. i’m grateful to have contact with two of my cousins and to someday meet their families and the families of my other two cousins who were holding a spot for their momma in that other plane. with great joy i listen to stories they tell me and i know that we’ll share time and snapshots, close-ups, wide angles, portraits, candids – reaching back and reaching forward – of our lives together.

i learn every day to let go, to hold on, to appreciate it.

the still-life is never really still.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

visit DAVID’S online gallery