it was in full support of intentional redundancy that i jotted this down as soon as nathan on alone season 6 said it, “the only currency we have is gratitude.”
it was without hesitation i looked up belleruth naperstek’s prayer for healing, “just give me this … so i can start over, fresh and clean, like sweet sheets billowing in the summer sun, my heart pierced with gratitude.”
it is with humility I find myself starting another new day – just after the fall solstice – with a clear etch-a-sketch, a blank notebook ready to be filled. there is but one breath between here and not here and it would seem prudent that i have wholehearted gratefulness for that breath.
so it is without any self-editorial skirmish that i write – once again – about gratitude.
it really is kind of about breathing those breaths, about waking up, about the turn of seasons. it really is about appreciating another inhale-exhale – this chance to be alive and how we choose to embrace it.
in these times, the distinction of starting over on another day is clear. the clothesline waits for the kind of prayers we hang on it. there is a vastness between billowing sweet sheets – fresh, clean, hopeful, and limp skanky soilage – deflating, stale, regressive.
we all have choices. we may uphold the efforts of those who forward goodness, who pursue equality, who speak emphatically about the care and concern of all.
or we may uphold the efforts of those who forward vitriol and egoistic agenda, who pursue limits on people based on bigoted skews, who spew vile exclusion.
life just seems way too short to live ugly.
i am personally choosing being on the clothesline in the waning summer sun. billowing and breathing and giving thanks.
i grew fond of clotheslines when we were on washington island. four years ago – almost to this very day – we hung out our first freshly washed laundry. the machine at the littlehouse was one of those washer-dryer combos but it had a few issues with the drying part and we felt it was using too much energy. so we went to mann’s true value hardware and bought clothesline and clothespins and, using the metal poles already sunk in the ground, we strung up our dryer.
it seemed simpler. it was simpler. and time slowed down a little. you can’t rush laundry on a clothesline. the sun and the wind off the lake had to do their job. and we had no control over that. we just waited. every now and then we’d go check the clothes for dryness. and then we’d wait a little longer.
my sweet momma had a clothesline out back – the rotary kind. i wasn’t paying a lot of attention back then, but i did notice the fresh outdoor scent of the sheets when she hung them out.
so when the farm in iowa had a clothesline, both of us had a wistful moment. not to mention the rust made for a plethora of photographs. it’s chip and jojo at their best, or leanne ford, featuring vintage, repurposing the old, framing the rusty, the chipped, the peeling. it’s exquisite stuff. surely this very clothesline t-pole could make an appearance inside were it to be retired from clotheslining.
we have stepped away from washington island. it’s been three years now. covid did a job on performing arts centers everywhere and wiwi’s TPAC was no exception. our co-managing director positions were given to someone local, someone who lived on-island full-time, someone who was already part of the island’s very fabric, lowering overhead costs and fashioning it into what they needed post-pandemic.
to say i don’t miss it would be truly false. though it had some issues in growing, we were dedicated to symbiotically weaving together the organizations on-island and elevating the maturing pac for outsiders as well as insiders. we would initiate change slowly – and some change more quickly – and then wait – just like the clothesline.
and then, the sun and the wind off the lake would let us know how it was going. we’d shift a bit in the stiff breezes and seek shelter of shade in too much glare.
and we knew the clothes and ideas would eventually dry and all would be fresh and sparkling and we could take off the clothespins and bring them in, welcoming them – just like sheets fresh off the line.
just past the eyelash phase, in a tightly woven and protected calyx of green sepals (leaves), the gardenia bonsai flower waits. a little research reveals that it will take about two months of growing to reach the point of a cracked bud, hopefully flowering after. KC is reportedly “one of the most loved and challenging plants in the bonsai world” and i hope that i am up to the task. these beautiful and somewhat-difficult-to-grow plants offer “a unique opportunity for anyone who wishes to take the time to attend to their needs.” they are particular about sunlight, particular about direction of window exposure, particular about temperature, particular about humidity, particular about watering, particular about feeding with fertilizer, particular about shape and pruning, particular about training, particular about insects and mold, particular about repotting, particular about touch. they do well without any negative stressful environmental factors. it occurs to me that perhaps i am in the bonsai gardenia family.
KC sits together with some other lower-maintenance plants (read: succulents you can’t really mess up) and is clearly different than them. its leaves are rich in color, two whorls protecting promising buds, and its presence demands to be noticed. i talk to it every day, encouraging it, paying attention, hoping i am tending to it properly. i truly cherish this little bonsai; my beloved daughter and her boyfriend sent it to me for my birthday and it was a joyous and glittering moment to receive such a beautiful gift. i want to do my best helping this little gardenia along. and, in light of the last year, the last couple years, i can understand and relate to its eccentricities. mmm, can’t we all?
in the evening KC is bathed in the sparkle of the sunroom’s happy lights. proudly in the spot it has claimed on the table, it sits, basking. it is one of the sparkles of the year. there have been many, despite the difficulties, within the difficulties, despite the challenges, within the challenges, despite these times, within these times. if it were possible, i would set each around us in the sunroom, also bathed in happy lights, like laundry clothespinned to a clothesline, reminding us of the best times, the memorable times, the happiest snapshots, the most poignant moments, the yin-yang of relationships, reassuring love in trying-to-stay-centered, the times we balanced stress and the times we succumbed to it, successful and unsuccessful zen, and exhausted times of rest.
i would place the clothesline in the middle of the room so that you could not help but see each item, each old wooden clothespin, memory-laundry crowded onto a timeline, reminding us that the minute does not stay. that whether the minute is feverish or beauty-laden, it moves on.
we are all particular; we are all particularly needy. our lists and our baggage surpass that of the little bonsai gardenia. we are all up to the task. we do our best in each moment, whether it is dark or sparkling. and we remember we can try again. we can help each other; we are “most loved and challenging”. KC already knows that.
i am excited to see KC bloom. i wait patiently for this amazing flower to arrive. in the meantime, i light the white gardenia candle, talk to my plant and drink in the glow of the happy lights, trying. each day. living just past the eyelash phase.
if you are watching hgtv and they are touting the positives of having a washer-dryer combo all-in-one, don’t believe them. we quickly discovered that the dryer part of the washer-dryer was in name only. unless you have hours to wait and money to toss for the added electricity, the “dryer” is more like a wringer-outer that removes some of the moisture from your laundry.
and so, on this little island, for this summer, we now have a …. wait for it … clothesline. after a trip to the mercantile where we bought line and clothespins, d installed it and voila! we have a “dryer”!!! the breezes off the lake and the sun dry our laundry quickly and dogdog loves to help with the hanging-out and taking-down of clothes on the line. i feel myself channeling my sweet momma as i shake the clothes taking them out of the basket before hanging, lessening possible wrinkles, and again shake the clothes as i take it them off the line, lessening possible hitchhikers. it feels like time-ago. it’s refreshing and pretty heavenly. there’s plenty of time. and the laundry dries.
we have found that we needed to slow down a bit here. we drive slower, for wildlife is everywhere and you must be careful. we walk slower – in the middle of the road – for there are far fewer cars and no frenzy. we have fewer errands, for there are not many places to shop. we see that we will see change slower, for the wheels of progress are big ole tires here, turning slowly as a big tractor down a mottled dirt road. we wave at everyone we go by, we stop and talk, we laugh about our long tenure here – a whopping fourteen days. we know we will slowly become a part of this place. there’s plenty of time.
we were at a new friend’s house high on a bluff in the woods overlooking the lake the other night. we were telling a story and i said something to our host about not doing nutshells very well; she interrupted my apology and said, “there’s no rush. tell the whole story. we have plenty of time.”
you have to plan a little differently with a clothesline. adjustment is necessary. a day which dawns rainy and grey will not be a good clothesline day. and so, you must choose a different day. for there is plenty of time.
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.
reverse threading 