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.
leonard pitts jr. wrote an opinion column, a gorgeous essay on the moon that we read the other morning. only it wasn’t really about the moon. he references a short film (which we watched) by filmmakers wylie overstreet and alex gorosh called “a new view of the moon” where the two men “wandered around los angeles with a telescope…asking a cross section of passersby in a cross section of places…to put their eyes to the viewfinder and gaze upon what they’ve looked at a million times yet never seen.” the two men found that people responded in the same way, awestruck, profoundly moved by the vision. the short doesn’t feature the moon; it features the reactions of people as they gaze into the telescope. leonard calls it “a hymn to our common humanity.” a reminder that in all our differences we are the same…”we spend too much time looking down and across.” we are, yes, tiny in the vastness – something i felt myself in writing about david’s painting FROM A DISTANCE that we chose for thursday’s melange. “so each other is all we have. but then, it should be all we need,” leonard writes.
when i drew this simple graphic, i wanted to portray a uncomplicated thought. an image unadorned with fancy-ness, but, hopefully, clear…or, at the very least, thought-provoking. “your” earth with arrows upward, “your” earth with arrows that circle around, “our” earth with arrows that circle around, “earth” with arrows that circle around.
it is all a circle. what we do counts. how we help counts. how we help our earth. how we help each other.
“don’t let that stop you,” she’d say. “remember the little engine,” he’d say. i grew up with parents who encouraged me to not doubt myself or what i could do. i hope that i made them (and are still making them – even on a different plane of existence) proud.
i watch my own children, The Girl and The Boy, and think they have figured this obstacles-thing out.
The Girl texted me photographs. she was in silverton, a vast expanse of ridiculously rugged mountains. she had (i’m glad i knew about this AFTERwards) snowboarded down these giants. she, literally, dropped off cliffs and boarded down the fresh powder, exhilarated and stoked. her girlfriend said, “we can do it” and they did. omg. amazing stuff! i am filled with awe. and more than a little jealous, in an i-wish-i-could-do-that kind of way. just the sheer chutzpah of it all is at the very heart of don’t-let-that-stop-you-little-engine-ness.
life is interesting. always. and obstacles are always there. they make life more interesting. yup. get stoked. rise to the challenges.
“don’t let that stop you,” she’d say. “remember the little engine,” he’d say. i grew up with parents who encouraged me to not doubt myself or what i could do. i hope that i made them (and are still making them – even on a different plane of existence) proud.
i watch my own children, The Girl and The Boy, and think they have figured this obstacles-thing out.
The Girl texted me photographs. she was in silverton, a vast expanse of ridiculously rugged mountains.
she had (i’m glad i knew about this AFTERwards) snowboarded down these giants. she, literally, dropped off cliffs and boarded down the fresh powder, exhilarated and stoked. her girlfriend said, “we can do it” and they did. omg. amazing stuff! i am filled with awe. and more than a little jealous, in an i-wish-i-could-do-that kind of way. just the sheer chutzpah of it all is at the very heart of don’t-let-that-stop-you-little-engine-ness.
mountain mugs!
life is interesting. always. and obstacles are always there. they make life more interesting. yup. get stoked. rise to the challenges.
two people get credit for this “just shrug”: 20 (aka john) and justine. it was in the “old days” when i was at the graphic design studio what felt like all the time when i learned this mantra.
20 designed the first ten or so of my album jackets (and traycards, if you want to get specific.) i would spend time with him and justine (the person who made things happen at the office) idea-brainstorming or watching layout. i can’t tell you how many times deadlines would rapidly approach or the print shop would goof on a run or the computer would glitch or…. i would inwardly be freaking out (and maybe outwardly), but 20 and just would be even and relaxed (at least on the outside.) one or the other would look at me and say, “just shrug.” after about a zillion times, it stuck.
shrugging off the stuff that stresses us out is not a science. it’s most definitely an art form – approached and accomplished differently by each person who attempts it. everyone chooses different crayons out of the box, everyone paints with different size brushes, everyone chooses a different key on the piano, everyone sings a different song, everyone relaxes a different way, everyone re-centers differently. but people are able -and if they weren’t, we would all be a paralyzed-with-stress community of people- to slough it off, to let it roll off their shoulders, to move on, to shrug.
i once heard an interview with a woman who was about 95. she was happy, happy, happy and spoke of her life. the interviewer asked her, “to what do you attribute your happiness, your ease in the world?” she answered, “i don’t take anything personally.”
the hymn “it is well with my soul” makes me think of the hymn “be still, my soul” which makes me think of mama dear, my grandmother (my sweet momma’s momma.) (are you still keeping up?) these two strong women, so alike and yet so different – were both anchors in my world, quietly (and sometimes not-so-quietly) shaping my ability to walk in this world and have faith. my sweet momma, for my growing-up years, went to church most every sunday. she and my poppo got dressed up and we would go to christ lutheran church on burr road in east northport. i got to hang with my best friend sue and we went to youth group and sleepaway camp (cool as it was, those days i was never a really big fan of sleepaway camp) and, together, we memorized the books of the bible in order (i still have no idea what the purpose of this was.) i can’t remember mama dear going to church as much; she went on some weekends, on holidays with us or to special events. mama dear had bright red hair, taught me how to sew and adored going to las vegas to play the slot machines. she was obstinate and somewhat opinionated and one of the loves of my early life.
during the time i went to suffolk county community college, mama dear’s house was within reach and i would go there for lunch or tea. we’d eat rye-bread-toasted-with-melted-butter and i’d tell her everything that was going on in my life. she’d listen and, every now and again, she’d say a few words of wisdom. i could tell her anything. she let my soul breathe.
i’d come home from school during junior high and high school and my sweet momma and i would sit on the couch and have tea and chips ahoy chocolate chip cookies, my way-back-then favorite store-bought cookies. we’d talk about my day, the challenges that face girls in high school, cute boys who might have said a word or two, the kids smoking on the bus. she would listen and, every now and again, she’d say a few words of wisdom. i could tell her anything. she let my soul breathe. matter of fact, she let my soul breathe the whole time i had the privilege of having her physically in my life. she still does.
we need that. a place for our souls to breathe. people with whom we can let our souls breathe. a faith in this universe that opens us and simultaneously holds us gently and anchors us. then – we can say: it is well with my soul.
anyone walking in our home knows this is true: i’m a vintage type. our home is not populated with new things fresh from the pottery barn catalog. instead, it is filled with things that are re-purposed, things that are old, things that have some history, things we haven’t replaced with new things. even our manner of work is kinda vintage, although this blog and our online product lines aren’t evidence of that. but as an acoustic-analog-type musician and a brush-to-the-canvas painter, we pretty much scream
“vintage”.
one of my most treasured physical memories of my poppo are a few old small wooden boxes we found next to his workbench. they would likely have been thrown away, but i knew he had “saved them” for some future purpose – perhaps holding random fasteners or nuts and bolts. we carefully wrapped them and brought them home and they now sit in our sunroom (next to our not-so-vintage-and-really-awesome nespresso machine) and they hold nespresso capsules (which are recycled) and a collection of old clothespins my sweet momma used to use on the old clothesline in our backyard growing up. it’s not the fancy stuff. it’s the vintage stuff.
i lusted over this typewriter in the antique store. i’m still thinking about it. if it’s still there one day when we are visiting that shop and i have a little bit of extra spending money, i will buy it. i’m not sure what i will do with it, but it speeeeeaks to me. my sweet momma loved typewriters too. what is it about those?? i think correctotype and purple carbon paper, the workout your fingers got, how it feels when you take the return handle to move to the next line down of type, and that really great sound -think of it…hear it- when you pull the paper out of the roll. it’s visceral.
the stove/oven in our kitchen is, ummm, old, and, although i prefer to think of it as ‘vintage’, it doesn’t necessarily count as romantic ‘vintage’. it was here when we bought the house in 1989 and had likely been here at least ten years at that point; the people who owned the house before us were not the buy-new or even fix-it-up type. matter of fact, they took it to a new level, putting contact paper on the countertops and backsplash and offering to teach us how to replace it. (eww. the sheer bacteria-breeding-ground-ness of that makes me shiver. one of the first things i did was remove that stuff.) but, back to the stove/oven. it continues to work and i can’t tell you how many meals i have cooked on it and how many people have eaten those meals. (if you merely consider almost 29 years and maybe just one meal a day, that is 10,585 times that this appliance has served me and my family and it is likely about 40 years old.) my sister has had multiple stoves/ovens in the time i have had this one. granted, she has enjoyed lots of updated features i haven’t had, but i haven’t (knock wood) spent anything to date on a stove/oven since 1989. amazing. it’s a testament to kenmore’s older appliances. someday i know we will have a new one, but in the meanwhile this workhorse is not taking up room in a dump somewhere, with a half-life of a billion years (ok, slight exaggeration) and i feel good about that. it’s not pretty, it’s not high-tech; i feel it has earned the label ‘vintage’ and no one seems to run – aghast- out of our kitchen because it graces the spot for ‘stove/oven’. there is something to be said for that.
we just had breakfast; d made it as he does each morning these days. he cooked it on that stove and it was deeeeelicous. and me? i’m going to get out our coin jar and count what’s in there. maybe there will be enough to go back to that antique shop so i can bring home this typewriter.
i don’t have to look further than my two children for examples of being relentless.
The Boy decided, early in high school, that he wanted to change his attention from baseball to tennis. now, most of his classmates who were tennis players on the varsity team had played since earlier childhood. The Boy had only hit the ball around on the court a few times with his very-best-growing-up-friend-miles or pierre-who-hung-out-here-all-the-time-in-high-school but his decision was made and he pursued it with zeal. a part of the jv team, he practiced and took individual lessons, group lessons, worked with his coaches. i, on the sidelines, sweated and watched, trying hard to be quiet as he pushed himself. he, a natural athlete, was moved up to the varsity team and doubled-down on the hard work of tennis – a “game” possibly more psychological than physical….ridiculously tough on a mom. he went to a university that welcomed him on their tennis team and, for years, i spent the better part of tennis season (and tournament season) driving all over the state and beyond, proud to see his skill on the court, proud to see his drive and, mostly, that it paid off for him. now he applies the same strategic tennis-approach to his life, his career. he was – and is – relentless.
The Girl decided, upon moving to the high mountains of colorado, that she, having never been on skis or other propelling-downhill-snow-gear (other than a sled), wanted to snowboard. she was working in a professional (indoor office) position out there, but she spent every spare moment on the slopes, striving to learn. every now and then she’d report in about her experience on copper mountain or keystone or breck or vail or …. she broke her arm, she twisted limbs, she broke her helmet. she persisted. time passed and she traded up for better snowboards, more equipment; she asked more people for advice or pointers; she was a learner beyond compare. she boarded in aspen, in snowmass, in patagonia. she dropped off ledges and split-boarded up vast mountains. fast forward just a few short years and she, no longer in an inside office doing the piece-of-paper-from-the-university-of-minnesota-work-she-was-trained-for, has taken the learn how to learn, learn how to persevere, learn how to dream – from life, from college, from her own purposeful heart – and is a snowboard instructor and a snowboard coach for a team in aspen. she offers more than snowboarding to those around her; she is the picture of excited zealousness. she was – and is – relentless.
so i………who read to them as little ones and tucked them in and drove them to music lessons and sporting events and played with matchbox cars and dressed barbies and ran alongside two-wheelers and crossed my fingers as they sat behind the wheel of the car and tried to instill a little appreciation of beauty and respect, and helped with homework and stayed up all night while they worked on last-minute-projects and rocked them to sleep at night with a well-loved-tattered ‘goodnight moon’ falling off my lap……..now learn from them. to be relentless.
there is this adorable couple from mississippi on hgtv these days. erin and ben star in a show called Home Town and they are working to restore their tiny town of laurel one beautiful home at a time. my favorite moment, as they run commercials for this very popular show, is erin passionately looking into the camera saying, with the most charming southern drawl, “get up and DO it.” you can tell she means this about every single thing. and to her call to action, i just might add – and be relentless.
faced with the word “brave” as our two artists tuesday image, i flounder with where to start.
very early this morning our dear friend linda left her home to go to chicago to have a cochlear implant. we spent time with her a few evenings ago, as she sorted through hope and fear, what she’s known and the future unknown. one of her greatest passions in life is dancing. she dances to music designed for dance, to music she hears in passing, to music in her head. terrified of losing the ability to hear music post-surgery, she pondered the what-if of not having this done. but her desire to actually be able to hear MORE (more beloved voices, more broadcasted music, more cds out on the deck or in the dance hall) won out and she is on a new journey. she is brave. brave. brave.
my sister just had surgery on her hand to remove a skin cancer. i am grateful and relieved she is healing from this and will likely not have to have any additional treatment. d and i talked about this on a walk the other day. i was weeping openly on the sidewalks in our neighborhood as i spoke about my big brother, who died after a valiant fight with lung cancer, my daddy who was a twelve-year-or-so survivor of lung cancer, my sweet momma who had a double mastectomy for stage four breast cancer at the age of 93. i cannot help but have some fear. who among us is exempt from that? but my big sister was brave and positive and i am determined, as i move forward in life, to be brave as well. in all arenas. on all fronts. d says i am much braver than he is. i’m not sure why he says this, but his words make me feel stronger.
we meet our challenges singlehandedly, we meet our challenges with a world of support, which is sometimes just one living person, one other being. our bravery is fortified by the love of others, by their words of wisdom, by their ability to shift our perspective, even just a little, by our re-defining. for we are not in this alone. we have on our wall in the bedroom a sign that reads, “wherever you are, that’s where i will be.” our ‘brave’ is fed by our faith, the sisu (perseverance and fortitude) we’ve honed in life, the courageous alter-reaction to the terror of taking a step, our community of people. susan and i have used the word “scrappy” to describe our lives; in looking at the definition of “brave” i would add intrepid and plucky. great word – plucky.
i mean, let’s face it – just being in the world and being who we really are each day is damn brave.
may 15, 1990. the day my life took an unchangeable turn. the girl was born. i became a mother. nothing would ever be the same. and i am beyond infinitely grateful. love became more than a noun and a verb – it became a person in my arms. every fibre of me was in love with this little wonder. i still am.
nothing can really prepare you for this feeling that is undeniably the most intense thing i have ever felt. i had my first taste of this when my niece wendy was born…the first of my niece-nephew-niece trio. i was young then – just eleven (sorry, ben…that really dates you ;)) i fell in love with each of them and, to this day, i’m quite sure they have no idea how much they are loved. but motherhood was different. it took my heart to a different plane entirely. i wondered how it would be -how i could love any more- when i was expecting my second child. when the boy was born i felt as if i had grown a whole second heart, as bottomless as the first one.
i am so very fortunate to be the mother of these two amazing people-in-this-world. my daughter ‘the girl’ is beautiful and fiercely independent and talented and smart and funny and -will always be- one of the reasons i breathe. my son ‘the boy’ is beautiful and fiercely independent and talented and smart and funny and -will always be- one of the reasons i breathe. i have been moved by their presence in the world. i have learned in countless ways. i have struggled with the balance of wanting-them-near and having-them-far-away. i know that there is not anything else i have done that is more important. they are the first thoughts in my mind in the morningtime and the last at night. i have been changed. i will never be the same.
this past week, like too many times in recent years, has cut to the core of my heart. i have felt overwhelming empathy for mothers (and, of course, fathers) who have lost their child to violence. i am not protected so much that i believe the events of the past week are the only children being lost to violence. i am no less appalled by the loss of a child to famine or war or domestic brutality. i just can’t imagine it. the raw brokenness-of-heart is unfathomable for me.
our children, like anything else that really counts in life, do not come with a manual in which you can look up ‘how’. we can read and study and research and google, but every situation is different and caring for and raising children is – and, by sheer importance, absolutely SHOULD be – the toughest thing you have ever done. and, if you have chosen it, the most momentous. it counts. it is the shepherding of life. it is life begetting life. children are the breath of the (what-kind-of-world-do-we-want?) world that continues. not just for their parents. but for all of us. because it doesn’t just take a village; it takes a world to raise a child, to raise children. they ARE the best thing.
reverse threading 