this will become a familiar sight. sunset coloring the lake, an island populated by waterbirds in the distance, jelly jars in hand. we have arrived.
fog dawned this day, which somehow seems apropos, considering. dogdog and babycat are struggling to adjust – a different house – the “littlehouse” as opposed to “home”. we are surrounded by bins and artwork and happy lights and a bulletin board full of photos. we have our picnic basket and our nespresso, office supplies and our peace signs. we’ve hung an old window frame and the chalkboard from our wedding. we have a vintage road-worn black suitcase just waiting to be filled with the stuff of this adventure. we have beach buckets with sunglasses and paintbrushes, kitchen utensils and a bottle of wine. we brought our cloth napkins, jelly jars and a set of our favorite bowls, our hydroflask coffee mugs and water thermoses, our lidded yeti wine tumblers. we have dogdog’s penguin, his lion, his candy cane and babycat’s chase-the-ball-in-the-circle plastic game. we have candles and clipboards, ukuleles, lawn games, and various devices that play music. we have threadied us up.
and it all boils down to this one thing – in my pocket now every day since jen gave it to me – a silver token that says PEACE.
right now, these thready things embrace me. they help with that peace I’m reminded of by this little token.
but this will all become a familiar sight. i know that.
“today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
i remember this on posters, on cards, in songs, in speeches. it was the 70s and recognizing that today was today and tomorrow was fresh seemed enlightened.
we stand, paused – and surrounded by things to pack into littlebabyscion and big red – and glance at what is forward. the adventure. the adventure begins. today is the first day…
we have accepted positions as the co-managing directors of a performing arts center on washington island in door county, wisconsin. we will be on island this summer, settling into the island community and handling the details of this beautiful 250 seat performing arts center. the community seems kind and embracing. the island is quiet and peaceful. our home will be a haven of sunrises across the water and our friends and family will gather there as we do our new work. the deck will welcome loved ones from near and far; the adirondack chairs will tease with invitation on water’s edge. dogdog and babycat will adjust, as will we. and soon, probably before we are ready, the summer will be over and we will be back on the mainland, still managing, but from afar.
there is a special energy in door county. you can feel it; it’s palpable. it’s a creative juju that celebrates the simple beauty of time spent outdoors, time spent with loved ones, time spent honoring the arts. i can’t think of a better match.
the adventure will soon begin. but before that, this ONE-DAY PRE-ADVENTURE PAINTING SALE!
if you are freshening up your surroundings and have a spot in your heart and home or workplace for one of david’s paintings, this 50% off sale may be good timing for you. browse the site and contact us (email: kerrianddavid1111@gmail.com) with questions or to make purchase arrangements. all paintings will ship before week’s end.
plan ahead, you say? well, we thought we did. we wanted a photograph to document our shore-sitting-sipping-on-bold-coffee moment that last morning on hilton head. we carefully watched the waves and placed our mugs in the wet sand. i stepped back to take a couple photos and voila! the tide is a funny thing…something of which we have no control. and so, the coffee cup dance became the moment and our laughter sated our need-for-coffee.
life, i suppose, is like that more often than not. when i moved away from family to kenosha, the conversation went something like this: “3-5 years and we will be moving on.” it is now 30 years later. 30 years! where did that time go? what about the plan? the tide seemed to have its own way and waves of joy and challenge, growth and grief, and simply TIME have washed over me. the tide laughs in glee.
we try to plan. my sweet momma had a great sign. i wish i had it. but it was something like this:
yet, despite our measuring, our strategizing, our calculating, our PLAN, life seems to take unexpected turns. the waves roll in and the tide giggles.
i remember i wore gloves the day i flew to finland with my grandmother mama dear. i was eight and i wore my sunday finest. i even wore a hat with my fancy dress, because that is how you flew – all dressed up. it was 1967 and we were departing for ten weeks together in scandinavia.
i remember lawn chairs in the front yard, my grandparents watching me hula hoop and skateboards with my brother and sister down the driveway. playing croquet with an old wooden set on the front lawn, kickball in the street, s-p-u-d across the neighbors’ yards and chasing fireflies clutching jars with punched-hole-lids so we could capture, watch and release them.
i remember riding bikes all over long island with my best friend susan. we’d tell my sweet momma we’d be home for dinner and off we’d go. just two girls on bikes, riding miles to the beach or a state or county park or each other’s houses, or just anywhere, with stops at carvel or friendly’s or mcdonald’s. no cellphones, no gps, no worries, no fear.
i remember in the mid and late 90s flying midwest express, often. the airline served actual meals on real plates with real cutlery, with champagne or mimosas or glasses of wine, depending on the time of day. they made warm chocolate chip cookies and brought them after the meal with hot cups of good coffee in real stoneware mugs. i dressed appropriately – in clothing that said i respected this lovely flight and those around me, the attendants working hard to make the experience pleasant.
i remember the day i flew to meet david’s family in 2013 the flight attendant asked me if i wanted to purchase water. water! no tiny bag of pretzels, no meal, no freebies, not even water. i had jeans and flipflops on, many people around me in their sweats.
time had passed.
the relics of a simpler time gone by remain. while helping 20 prepare his momma’s house for an estate sale, i opened a drawer next to the bed. in it were gloves – mostly white, but a pair or two of black or brown. there were short gloves and long gloves, cotton gloves and soft leather gloves. gloves with bows and gloves with seed pearls. gloves carefully placed together with their mates, clean and ready for wearing.
i wonder when the last time was that eileen wore these. for that time has passed. and we can only now vaguely remember it – a time when people celebrated occasions with stockings and heels and gloves to the elbow, customer-appreciation-gratis mimosas on airplane flights and kickball in the street.
the studio in our basement is full of beautiful paintings that haven’t yet found their proper home. it is also full of boxes of cds that have been replicated and shrink-wrapped, ready for their new homes. there is no shortage of completed work down there, no shortage of heart projects, no shortage of sweat and tears. there is no shortage of work in progress, canvases prepped, notebooks of lyrics and melodic gestures.
we moved our 20’s father’s paintings last week. today we will move the remainder. as we carefully loaded big red, you could not help but feel wistful about these paintings moving away from their home, to be stored by 20. duke was a prolific painter and his work is stunning; we wondered where and how these mostly large pieces would find a permanent home. where does it go from here?
any artist, thinking about the impermanence of life, wonders that. where does it go from here? who will purchase it, hold onto it, look at it, listen to it, read it, ultimately – feel it? will it matter later on? does it matter now?
colorado to wisconsin. with a stop in columbia, missouri. the first day is long. twelve hours give or take. we drive out of colorado into kansas, which has to be one of the wider states in the journey, and head for wendy’s. she and keith are tolerant of whatever-time-we-get-there, knowing the challenges of a long drive. this time, it was different.
this time we weren’t in our littlebabyscion toodling along, huffing and puffing up hills. this time we were in Big Red, a giant ford F150. she hadn’t been driven this-far-at-one-time in years. we were high up and felt like road warriors.
columbus gave us a couple cassette tapes to play in the player and, in planning ahead, i had brought a dozen favorites from years past (ok, the 70s are many years past.) we played each of them, singing along. and then switched to the radio. it only seemed right that country music be blaring out of the speakers, so we obliged.
although we blasted cassettes of john denver, loggins and messina, alabama, england dan & john ford coley among others, i have a few favorite radio songs of the journey east and north. one direction’s what makes you beautiful, lady gaga and bradley cooper singing shallow, toby keith’s i wanna talk about me and my new fave, billy currington’s good directions and turnip greens. a sweet country-music story.
we were talking with jen and brad last night in their kitchen, lingering over our potluck together. we talked about compromise and life and decisions and chance. like everyone, david and i have had our share of each of those. decisions sorted and pondered, and compromises, bending to the things that make life meaningful, balancing reality with idealism. and then there’s chance. we could relate to the story of turnip greens…happenstance changing life. a choice, one direction taken, a turn, one click…and everything changes. what comes is predicated on what was and what is this very second. we second those lyrics – thank God for good directions and turnip greens.
we turned up the stereo in Big Red and opened the windows with the AC on. somewhere along the way, we decided it was a she, for she had gently mothered columbus as he drove a bit more gingerly in recent days and she sturdily and protectively lumbered us across the country. laughing and certain of everything and absolutely nothing, we turned this beautiful big old pickup truck toward home.
i cry when i first see them. i cry when they are disappearing. those mountains. my last long look at them as we drive east out of colorado. those billboards and tshirts and bumper stickers that say, “the mountains are calling and i must go” speak to me. they have ever since i was 18 and first experienced them. john denver’s rocky mountains have been a lure for decades now. and i can feel the pull, even from a distance.
if you look past the horizon in this photograph you will see what i last saw as we drove away a few days ago. you won’t know that tears came to my eyes or that i turned in my seat to watch the vista fading away at 70mph. we didn’t even get into the mountains this trip and i could still feel my heart stretching, reaching to hold on.
they are in the distance now. so much so that i cannot see them.
but i carry those mountains with me and know we will one day, again, be there. i will catch my breath when they loom suddenly into view. we will drive deeper into them, surrounded by forest and canyons and soaring beauty. we will hike on adventures and we will sit and gaze in wonder. and then, when it is time to leave, i will crane my neck and watch them disappear. into the distance. no dry eyes here.
the sand was ridged pointy and very hot to the touch, but this is the place we had already chosen to park our flipflops. each time we all walked down to where the waves hit the shore we wore our flipflops through the dune seagrasses, punctuated with sand spurs, trying to avoid the inevitable. the horseshoe crab shell was our marker…the place we would leave off our shoes and venture to the water over sand that had been warmed by extreme-heat-wave-induced temperatures. The Girl said we needed to be zen, as if we were walking on hot coals. and so we scrambled over the blistering sand, all zen-like, as we walked and then, quickly, ran asfastaswecould down to the water or back to our shoes. we became creatures of habit. no matter how far we walked along the beach, this horseshoe crab signaled home.
until.
the feels-like temperature was about 106, the sun beautiful and bright but dangerous. the sand….was brutal. i started to leave my flipflops by the horseshoe crab and make my way again across the pointy-burning-the-bottom-of-my-feet sand when it suddenly occurred to me that we could wear the flipflops further. that we might c.h.a.n.g.e. where we were leaving them. that there may be other places we could all park them. there could be another horseshoe crab parking lot. or some other marker. we could actually wear them across the pointy-burny sand, all the way down to the damp sand cooled by the ocean. brilliant!
The Girl and The Boy immediately followed, no second thoughts for them. change must be easier at 29 and 26 than it is at….our ages. we laughed aloud at this habit, this ritual, that we had created, that we were adhering to, d and i. we wondered aloud why it hadn’t occurred to us sooner to just leave the flipflops on till we were closer to the water’s edge, to avoid the pain.
i’d like to think it was because it was held over, from way-back, when our ability to zen-ly walk across burning coals excelled. and habits were easier to break.
summer is coming. at least that is what the calendar indicates. in recent days it has snowed in colorado. it has been rainy and damp and cold in wisconsin. the spring storms have been devastating the central states. but summer is coming.
and with summer comes a little slowing-down, moments to linger in the sun, sit in lawn chairs and chat, sip iced tea on the deck, have picnics under the canopy of a tree. we pick clover and make necklace chains, count the petals on a daisy, lay in the sweet smell of freshly mowed grass.
reverse threading 