so i’ve decided that there is a difference between us and our pets. you roll your eyes and think, “she is clearly a little slow on this…” but i’m not just stating the obvious. i watch dogdog and babycat through their days and find wonder in their absolutely joy-filled acceptance of the moment. for dogdog and babycat, there is no continuum of how-am-i-going-to-feel-right-now; it is simply always at the apex of ‘happy’.
dogdog runs around the backyard gleeful. our neighbor and friend john says he can practically hear him thinking, “oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” he meets us at the back door when we arrive back home or when we ask him if he wants to “go on errands”, vertical-jumping to challenge the best of basketball players. at the end of the evening, when he is sure it is time for “sleepynightnight”, he rolls over for a treasured ‘belly-belly’; nothing else matters to him at that moment. all of his actions are based in the moment. all of them assume the best.
if babycat can’t be laying curled up next to you, he seeks the sun and follows it around the house. he sits on the chest in front of the window (just as in this drawing of chicken marsala and babycat) and gazes outside, clearly enchanted by everything ‘out there’. he gets most excited by mealtime and a ‘treat’ will literally make him come running and put him over the top. all of his actions are based in the moment. all of them assume the best.
why is it that we function so differently? why is it that we cannot assume the best? we tend to pre-form our view about our day, our challenges, our life, our conversations, our relationships, our, well, most everything. we drag all the old baggage along with us, all of which contributes to heavy-hearted-difficult-to-circumvent-or-navigate negative assumptions of what is to come. what would it be like for us – as individuals, as couples, as families, as a community, as a country, as a world – to assume the best? to assume awe?
there is maybe nothing that says “cool” more than a bass player. upright bass or electric. they have a certain air, a je ne sais quoi, that just quietly and intensely says ‘phat’.
jim is like that. he was the throw-anything-at-me-and-i’ll-astound-you bass player on a couple of my albums. such a great sound. he’s a top-shelf musician and i’m proud to have had his playing as part of my recordings.
the bass player, 24″ x 48″
this painting makes me think of jim and also of several of The Girl’s and The Boy’s friends from high school. they were bass players in jazz band (and every other band that our district offers) and they rocked the house. many of them, like jim, are in chicago now and i hope they are playing and still rocking the house.
this cityscape morsel comes from david’s painting the bass player. when i was photographing the full painting, i kept zero-ing in on this morsel….the city at night. i love the fun of it, the color, the chaos. designing products with this morsel was a blast! i got lost in the possibilities. just as you can get lost in the night in this city.
my name is kerri and i was a razor-flip-phone-holdout. it’s occurred to me that i might have been the last person who ever had one; i went from having my own brand-new-razor to The Girl’s hand-me-down-razor to my friend’s hand-me-down-razor to my friend’s daughter’s hand-me-down-razor….you get the picture. i would hold tightly the little screws keeping both halves of the flip together as they loosened and fought to cease and desist – just to not have to move on and decide on (read: learn) a new phone.
The Girl and The Boy generously gave me my first iphone for christmas a few years ago. it was an iphone 4 and it was groundbreaking. all my fears of smart-phoning disappeared and i became a part of the 21st century.
if it weren’t for texting, there are few conversations i would have with my children-who-live-far-away-and-are-too-busy-to-be-on-the-phone-with-mom (i knowww you can relate.) it was always remarkable to me how fast The Girl could text; i teased her with thoughts of entering her in national contests. she rolled her eyes. apparently, this is not an uncommon skill. i have to say, i flipped out the day, some time ago, that my iphone deleted my string of texts from The Boy. these text-strings are pieces of life.
i have graduated one iphone beyond the 4. skipping the 5 i now have a 6. well, technically, a 6s (there are varying opinions as to what the ‘s’ means.) it still amazes me the kind of connectivity with the world i can have with this little device, how truly smart it really is.
text me when you land makes me laugh. an absurdly funny cartoon, you have to admit, texting is alive and well in all places.
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.
late yesterday afternoon, after a day spent working on computers and designs, with technology sluggishness taking over our souls, we headed to the woods to take a hike. any time we feel tired or ‘stuck’ we walk. around the ‘hood, along the lake, or to the starbucks about 2 and a half miles away. any time we feel exuberant or elated we walk. sometimes in the mountains (ahh!!) or in chicago or the third ward in milwaukee. any time we need a ‘business meeting’ we walk. mostly in the woods, in a county or state park. walking and breathing in fresh air brings us back to the moment. it re-centers us.
we hiked up the small rise in the woods, the light was waning and behind us the sky was deep deep orange. in the clearing beyond the stand of trees stood, very still, a deer. it was clearly the ‘lookout’ as way back in the field were six more deer, easy to count in the almost-dark as their white tails bobbed when the lookout gave the alert. we stood perfectly still watching this beauty, a magic moment in the woods. neither of us wanted to leave the spot. i took a picture, not because you can see the deer in it, but because it preserved the moment for me. i didn’t want to forget. because, as you already know, i am thready like that.
around me, every rock or feather or piece of wood or ticket stub or scrap of notepaper carries with it a specific moment – preserved in time. i could not necessarily tell the story of each of those moments – there are far too many for my synapse-challenged-brain to remember. but i know that each one had meaning for me. each one defined yet another piece of me, my relationship with someone i love, a time i shared with another being, a learning, a moment of sheer bliss, a moment of deep sadness. each moment renewed me and brought me to my next moment of living.
as i have moved through life one thing has become certain. that everything changes. nothing stays the same. life is in flux, always fluid. what more do we have than each moment as it arrives for us? i ask myself, “how do i want to spend this moment? what do i want to feel about this moment?” for i can never get it back. i can never re-do it. time has moved on. and so i must keep moving. i write about moments, i compose about moments, i tell stories about moments. for me, those details count. attempting to put succinctly (ha!) into words my philosophy-of-what-moments-mean is impossible; it is the umbrella that skies over everything else i believe, everything else i think.
when The Boy was little, he called the rearview mirror in cars the “review” mirror. particularly poignant i think. i have seen it written “don’t stare into the rearview mirror. that’s not the direction you are going.” instead i try (read: TRY) to review the past moments, learn from them, find grace in them, save the memory threads. and wholeheartedly embrace the ones to come. the moments. unique. in every way. i love this chicken marsala image.
years ago i was commissioned to write for and perform at the annual breast cancer symposium in san antonio, texas. after talking with the producers, i had gathered enough details to know that this symposium is a very big research event in which new research is both shared and celebrated, at which researchers and physicians from all over are honored. these folks are often the people in the foreground of new advances but the background as far as survivors and lay-people knowing who they are. it was from that place that i wrote this song.
a couple of years after that, lance armstrong was leading the tour of hope across the country. despite his more recent fall from grace, there were countless good people working on this tour of hope – bicyclists riding across the country with big rallies in various cities – to raise awareness for cancer and celebrate survivorship. i performed alongside my cherished friend and breast cancer survivor speaker heidi on an out-of-season gorgeous day in october in downtown chicago at the block 37 on state street park that is now a high-rise. lance was there and was laser-focused and passionate in his support of cancer survivors. at the time, i was honored to work with him and i credit that day with meeting my dear friend scordskiii, his photographer, who brought many a laugh and hours of conversation during subsequent years when i really needed both.
this song is personal for me. the moffitt cancer center in tampa, florida used it as a thank-you in a hospital-wide video to the staff for their work. for me, their efforts included extending my poppo’s life 12 years beyond diagnosis. i was proud and honored for this song to be featured.
in the last two decades, heidi and i have performed all over the country at innumerable oncology events together (walks, runs, survivor celebrations, conferences, hospitals, cancer centers, churches, memorials): she, speaking from a survivor’s viewpoint; me, performing songs i have written to resonate with these events. each event has been a shining light for us.
as i listened to this song YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE the other day, i realized, once again, that this is not a song dedicated to one effort, to one fight. it is a song that is dedicated to any effort in which people gather together in community to fight against darkness, whatever that darkness might be. it’s for the people in the foreground, on the front line. and it’s for the people in the background, not looking for any credit whatsoever, just looking for change…good change. it’s for all the people we don’t know who walk, strike, write, argue, research, march, petition, and present clear options to the light.
this week i would dedicate this song to those young students who have risen up from the pitch-darkness shooting at marjory stoneman douglas high school in florida. to have a voice. to bring light. we are all proud of you. you make a difference.
peace. the written word (or the symbol) punctuates the corners of our home. it’s suspended on doorknobs, off of old window frames, made of old copper or tin, in my studio handmade by the boy out of a scrap of wood, a necklace from the girl hanging on a mirror, a chunky silver ring on my right hand from david…
“may you be peace” would be my motto, if we all had mottos. i just feel like i can’t think of better places to lead from than kindness and peace. way back in high school, a long while ago, the-amazing-english-teacher-andrea made an impression on all of us – with her peace signs and her pay-it-forward-thinking; if my obsession with peace signs hadn’t already started by then, this indeed was its jump-start.
david’s painting MAY YOU wraps a buddhist prayer around you and is astoundingly beautiful. as i photographed it for his gallery site, i found myself concentrating also on morsels of the painting, each stunning in their own right. this is one of the morsels. may you be peace is simple and complex, beckoning you to be both of this world and beyond this world. wishing you, today and every single day, this peace.
i just asked david if he would illustrate a children’s book i wrote a long, long (did i mention long?) time ago. naturally, he said yes, because, uhh, what else is he going to say? so maybe one of these days you’ll see my snowflake-is-as-raindrop-does story in book form. in the meanwhile, i’ll tell you the story…hopefully succinctly.
once upon a time (because all great stories start like that) there was a little raindrop. after it had fallen out of the sky with a gajillion other raindrops it had a choice. whether to drop-and-roll quickly down the street and be transported through evaporation back up into the sky to reform and do it all over again or – and yes, i am definitely personifying this raindrop – it could choose to roll over to a small plant or tree or blade of grass that needed sustenance. the raindrop believed (had been taught by others?) that this sacrifice would end its journey…there would be no more going-up-into-the-sky-coming-down-as-a-raindrop-all-over-again if it made this choice. but the little raindrop rolled over to a little flower anyway, curled up beside its stem and sighed. what it didn’t realize would happen was this – that it still evaporated. it still went back up into the sky. it still reformed. but this time it was chosen to reform into a beautiful, unique snowflake, an honor bestowed only on those raindrops who had made a difference, who had yielded to a different choice.
so you’re thinking, ok, what does this have to do with snowflakes and snowmen? well, we just never know how our choices will impact our possibility or how we might be surprised by something different than what we perceive to be our intended possibility. you have to admit, being a snowflake in a snowman with a scarf and goofy hat that makes people smile and children dance would seem way more satisfying than being a snowflake in a dirty pile of snow in a parking lot. we learn to go with the flow. sometimes the unanswered prayers -loss of the UNlimited possibilities- turn out to be the best.
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.
every summer i break one of my two little baby toes. every single summer. last summer alone i logged tons of miles on my $2 old navy flipflops as a result. i even talked about it on this blog. what did i learn? in particular, what did i learn THIS time as opposed to all the other times? i learned to either 1. slow down a little 2. watch where i’m going a tad bit more 3. never go barefoot. the thing is, i’m pretty sure it will happen again. i’m still learning.
i haven’t fallen off my bike in quite some time (and hope not to cause these days it will hurt much more than it used to) but i can relate in countless ways to our chicken marsala monday in the melange this week. i can distinctly remember taking off the training wheels and teaching the children to ride their two-wheelers, running down the sidewalk next to them. for that matter, i can totally -and (yougetthis) viscerally- remember teaching them how to drive.
we’ve been watching the olympics. athletes of inordinate ability who had to start somewhere – and, for sure, who fell in the process. not afraid of failing, but keeping on keeping on. being an ace anything is far off. do any of us ever really get there?
as an adult (ugh, i guess 58 qualifies me if for no other reason than sheer number) there are a lot of things i still want to learn. a few years ago i wanted to throw pots. i spent more than i bargained on for clay and lessons and studio time and more clay and ended up with the most wonderful tea light holder. (ok, i also threw a cereal-size-bowl and a few other assorted incredibly-shrinking-bowls as i struggled to center them and not have the clay collapse on the wheel.) let’s just say i was not gifted at this. but it did (and still does) make me laugh. and i know that i will someday try it again and i will add to my assortment of teenytinyclayobjects in which i can store paperclips.
when we see my amazing son and his boyfriend, we seem to be developing this tradition of bowling together. now, even though i live in wisconsin – and it is practically a law to be a good bowler here – i am pretty bad at bowling. every now and then i do something (like pick up a spare or get a strike) and am shocked, but most of the time i am aghast at how the ball creates splits in the pins and i find myself leaning while watching it careen (generous term) down the alley. the thing i must say, though, is that each time i do a little better. and the reallybadscores will, if i dedicate any time at all to practice, perhaps improve. mostly, i laugh. and i wish i could bring that to ANY thing i am learning – be it a new sport, an artform, a study of some philosophy or political issue, or – a big one – relationship. we fall. we get up, brush ourselves off, ask for grace and try again.
even though there are so many venues of crashing, the recording studio is a prime place to watch yourself fall down. you’ve written music, lyrics. you’ve practiced and practiced – there’s muscle memory in each measure. you’re ready, water and coffee by your side. (for me, not so much water once in the studio as it ….toomuchinformationalert…makes throat noises i can’t avoid.) and then you start. there’s so much riding on the line. and some days? some days you can’t get through a track. something is amiss; something is wrong. the first track of my first album was recorded in a studio in evanston. ken, my producer, was a stranger to me and i drove down with a posse of friends. i felt a little nervous, but mostly felt confident i was prepared. hours later, i had recorded the solo piano track for galena (the album released from the heart) and ken gave me a cassette tape (how funny is that?!) to listen to. i put it in the cassette deck of my old chrysler blue minivan and turned it on. and was appalled. rigid playing met my ears. it sounded nothing like me or my playing, or my piece of music, for that matter. all that confidence translated to a coldness, an unemotional-ness instead of a good track. i called ken (who i barely knew then, but now the same brilliant producer who has produced 14 of my 15 albums) and he suggested that, “maybe you should just write the music and have someone else play it on the recording FOR you.” what???!!! uhhh, i didn’t even know what to answer that would sound in the least bit polite.
and so i painfully listened to the recording again and sat back down at home on my bench. and i realized i needed to be ready -at any moment- to fall. THAT is what would make the piece sound like me and sound like, well, music. the rawness, the every-moment-ness, the vulnerability to mistakes and moving beyond them. that is what would make it shine as a learning. preparation is wise, flexibility is a must, a sense of humor is required, confidence is irrelevant, perseverance is utmost.
so i’ve decided that there is a difference between us and our pets. you roll your eyes and think, “she is clearly a little slow on this…” but i’m not just stating the obvious. i watch dogdog and babycat through their days and find wonder in their absolutely joy-filled acceptance of the moment. for dogdog and babycat, there is no continuum of how-am-i-going-to-feel-right-now; it is simply always at the apex of ‘happy’.
reverse threading 