Lettuce Rising...and Me, Too

Last evening in the garden, I scraped back the straw and found the first stirrings of the lettuce seeds I planted 10 days ago.

I felt an immediate and oh so primal rush of emotion.Two emotions, actually. And today, because I am nothing if not emotional overkill,I am thinking about how bizarre these feelings are.

First, I felt excitement.YES, YES  there WILL be wonderful salad this spring... romaine and mesclun and some weirdlings called "tennis ball lettuce" that came from a visit to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello a few years back.

That was ridiculous enough because this is 2013 in metropolitan Philadelphia.So it is not as if there will be No Salad on the Homestead This Spring if the seeds stayed below ground. Or, for that matter, if they stayed in the package or even back at Monticello.

My second feeling was pride.Yep, pride.I beamed down on their little green heads like they had just gotten the lead in the 5th grade play. But I had not taught these little seedlings to read, I had not nursed them through stomach viruses  and head lice, I had not given them years of Unconditional Love.  I ripped open a package, hurled them onto the soil, covered them with 1/4 inch of dirt/rock and then buried them beneath straw so disgusting that the farmer wondered why I would even give her money for it.  

Oh, and I forgot to water them.

Yet, somehow, I felt proud of their existence. Of their conception. Now, conception has been sort of a sore subject for me since my so-called "childbearing years" were anything but that. I've chronicled my descent into infertility elsewhere.  Even though adoption brought me into double-barrelled motherhood (see vomiting and head lice, above) I have always kept my sorrow at missing out on experiencing pregnancy, delivery, nursing buried beneath a, well, a layer of moldy straw. Last evening, in the pink of the first warm sunset in months, I pulled that straw back, too.  

And you know what? There was nothing there. I couldn't find an ache. I couldn't evoke a tear. Wow. It only took 30 years, but there was not even the slightest trace of a scar.  Or perhaps the other scars --you know, the ones you get from that tiny part of parenting that starts AFTER birth, from failing eyesight and creaky knees, from just Living in This World--those scars have left bigger marks.

Who knows.  It doesn't matter. So much of what I let define me for decades...just doesn't matter anymore. Which leaves me free to feel magic where there once was straw. I wish I could jump up and down and tell all the 20 somethings in my life to exhale, to assure them that it will all be all right in whatever form it takes. But if they were truly able to hear that, why, they wouldn't be 20 something, would they? 

I'm going back to the garden, where I can just be amazed. And excited. And proud. Because gardening is just this thing that evokes those kind of emotions, especially in an era and a place on the planet where the successes and failures are not life-threatening. Perhaps because it offers connection with forces much bigger than our own lives and the sight of a seedling is proof of connection made?

I'll keep you posted about my little darlings.

My OTHER Girl

I'm working on one of those posts with Big Thoughts.  Meanwhile, I will entertain you with the OTHER girl on my bulletin board.

Judging by the way the guys around her are dressed, this must be the 1920s.  I see more than her vampiness...maybe her independence? Her ability to command your attention?  Who knows...I just know I love her to pieces.

And I wonder a lot how she turned out.  I never forget that the blue-haired ladies blocking Aisle 5 with a shopping cart, the invisible women lining the halls of the nursing home, the aunt with the funny-smelling apartment...they are each the stuff of the black and white photos scattered on the flea market table.  You just can't tell unless you know how to see.

My Girl

I bought her at a flea market years ago and she has survived all the many rounds of stuff purging since then. Look at her.

I mean really look at her. 

I love her the way I loved Scout Finch, Jo March,Nancy Drew, and little Elizabeth Walton. I am jealous that she got to ride her bike on a dirt path through the field.  I imagine her looking at her wrist watch, wiping the mosquito off her cheek, and gunning those pedals because she had to get home before Some O'Clock.  "Would you hurry up??" she winces to the photographer. "I gotta go!"
 

Decades and decades after this summer, there was a daughter, daughter-in-law, or second cousin once removed.  She finds this picture amidst a thousand others in a yellowed cardboard box from the local department store.  She looks at it and tosses it into the "to go" pile without a second look because there is no time for second looks when there are still 8 rooms left to pack up and out.  All by herself, My Girl makes her way into a wooden cheese box filled with a million other black and white  photographs that sits beneath the sign written by the enterprising flea marketer: "Make Your Ancestors!"

And on to my wall, where I look at her every single day. My Girl, my Girl.

The Fabric of My Life

Inspired by Anne Frank and her dear "Kitty," I started keeping a diary in 6th grade. Anne wrote lofty observations about humanity, I tracked my progress towards getting a bra. ("FD" being my very secret code for "further development.")   

I continued through junior high, chronicling my yearnings for that first kiss and my fury at how Cheri acted at Gayle's bat mitzvah. It kept up through high school, college, and all the years thereafter. The outside of each book reflected every stage and pretention of my life but the inside...well, it always held the most honest of words.

 It was exactly these Most Honest of Words that started to weigh on me in recent years. I had made the grave mistake of reading through bits and pieces of my brother's journals in cleaning out his stuff after his sudden death and I became very worried about my own legacy. Thoughts captured in a rage or hormonal flux could really sting innocent eyes and so, several years ago, I ripped out the worst offenders ...

 and ceremonially fed them to the firepit. Now, this winter, in my general purging of Stuff, I began to feel that 40 years of carting these books around was getting pretty old. I sat with that and yesterday, I decided that I no longer needed them.  Baskets overflowing with endless chronicling of moods, fallings in love and breakings apart, psychic restlessness and question after question after question...ugh.

The pages bored me. They had little to do with who I am now and boy, do they take up room.   Firepit, here we come. Until...

Until I found something incredible.

Tucked between the ramblings were the tenderest of young girl moments...

the Dear John Julie letter, complete with tear stains...

The sage words of my new college roommate, so new that I wasn't sure how to spell her last name...a perfect chronicle of the birth of a 40-year friendship (I SEE YOU CRYING, J) :

The frantic agony of just trying to grow up...

The joy of getting there. 

 I found a heart that was wide open...

And a joi de vivre that I really like.

So, here's what I know. The ramblings still bore me.  But beneath them, I now see the history, the heart, the spirit that is me. Words are the warp and the weft of my life and so these old pages, well, they are like the lacy handkerchiefs and yellowed linens tucked in your grandma's dresser (mine had receipts for gold coins and old Dear Abby columns).  Over at Spirit Cloth, Jude Hill teaches us to look for story in fabric, especially the old ones.  And to make a cloth with meaning.  And so here it is...my latest quilt, made from the fabric of my life.

The story of me. Without the dirty parts.

An Idea Catches Fire

Last night, trying again to find my balance amidst the chaos of my parents' move here, I felt pulled to those fruit juicy blocks I wove last fall.  I started to arrange them on the floor, trying one sequence after another. Then they jumped to the wall in a way that started to move the parts inside me into place.

 There was this.

Hmm.  What if I invert it?  Rather than shuffle all them blocks around yet again, I simply cocked my head to the side.  So I could see this.

I forgot that right behind, there was this.

And within seconds, there was this.

The end.

Day 2: About a Wall

I garden in raised beds.  Billy and Clutch take the "bed" part very seriously.

The garden butts up against a low stone wall that Himself made on his 40th birthday.  Last summer, we replaced the chicken wire that Billy kept pulling down (just to sit in some dirt???) with a dream-come-true fence, made to our thoughts by "Outside the Box" Steve.... a shameless bribe from Himself to make me stop hollering about moving to get away from The Evil Neighbor.

Which still didn't stop this.

So Himself, not anywhere near 40 anymore, took it upon himself to make more wall. He locked each piece of good ole Pennsylvania river rock to another, stone by stone, row by row.  The rocks were laid out all over the place, he paced back and forth till he found the right one. Or hurled it off if it didn't work and began pacing anew.  Look what he did:

 He did this for me.  So as I come to Day 2 of noticing what I love, it has to be this.  A man who would make this for Me...not for the garden (he doesn't eat much of what I grow), but for me.  He makes me laugh and he builds me stone walls.  What more could a girl want in a boy?

The Story of Red: A Drama in Six Acts

Act 1:  I couldn't be more out of sorts. I have been begging myself to stitch but I cannot find a story.  Or even a path. Last night, I gave in and cut a pile of red and white squares. I plopped down in my chair with off-white thread, a needle, a zip lock bag of red scraps...and a lot of despair.  

Act 2: Fine, I'll just do it.  One square to the next. No expectations, no real love either.  At least my fingers are moving . I force myself not to look at the way the squares, which were all cut equally, are each taking on their own sizes. As the strip grows, I start to feel the coiled up place behind my eyes give way a bit. 

Act 3:  Yikes, three interlopers!  Hey...

Act 4: And then this happened. As fast as you scrolled down to see it. Really.

Act 5: And this.  Just as fast.

The pieces of old sari silk that I learned how to cord from a Jude video. I was having a great time making that cord a few days ago but stopped because I couldn't figure out what to do with it. Lucky for me,it figured it out all by itself.

Act 6: Now the brain coil has melted, the fingers are dancing, and I am grinning with delight.  Hey look, she has a friend!

Seed packets...the start of growth

Moral: its the doing, its the doing, its the doing. Sometimes, it will take you somewhere. Which may take you somewhere else.  In any case, you get to the best places when you're not looking. (Some of the red even jumped on to my Michigan cloth, putting an end to a longtime dry spell there, too.)   

I've got some happy seed packets that maybe will grow something else. Or not.  You know, people who create say that kind of stuff a lot but tonight, for the very first time, I really learned what it means. 

The End. 

[applause]

When I Open My Eyes, I See: Day 1

I got the idea from Grace over at Windthread...to notice and document the things I love in my world.  I hope the noticing nudges me back into some desperately needed balance and the documenting, well, that is where the learning comes in. 

So here goes seven days of opening my eyes around here.

In fact, here is the first thing I see when I open my eyes in the morning...lately, around 6 am.

  
It is a crusty old beauty, my window, put it during the 1750s.  I lift the blind (a tear-droppy little number that makes me SO happy)  and see the day. When I am feeling highly evolved, I remember to truly See the Day Ahead and feel exquisite amounts of gratitude. For the morning, for the choices that led me to this farmhouse in Pennsylvania instead of a condo in suburban Detroit.  I think about the people who have looked out of this window over the past 250 years.  I bask in the bright blue of the surrounding plaster...I think about things other than myself. 

That, by the way, would be a rare day. 

 I am more likely to rekindle my anger at my truly evil neighbor, whose existence necessitated all the fencing that wasn't there before. Or  start wondering why paint won't stick to the window sash and look at all the chips in the plaster and while we're on the subject, I better remember to call the electrician, get Dad's Medicare papers in order, get fuel delivery on automatic, and...you know The List.

The learning hits me right now.  When looking through a window, you have a choice of what to see.

In the Prayer Book Last Night

"Kavanah" (emphasis on last syllable) 

is the Hebrew word for "intention."

The State of Michigan

I will never again be going back to Michigan to visit my parents. When the plane took off from Metro Airport a few Sundays ago, I looked out the window and became all the Julies that sat in that seat over the decades...leaving to head towards or to escape from, leaving in tears, rage, jitters, leaving with fiancees and husbands, crying babies and sullen teenagers.

I saw all those girls, like some kind of movie from the 50s where an actual spiral on the screen lets you know you are spiraling back in time. They are all still in me and they are creating this new cloth...The State of Michigan.

Not sure if the rest of the world knows that Michigan is shaped like a mitten.  I've stitched in the beginnings of a pine tree using some lovely hand-dyed varigated floss that I buy instead of getting peanut M & Ms but stopped making the needles till I get a more foresty green. The four-patch is from a bunch of 19th century blocks I found in Leadville Colorado and the word is from a pillow that Billy Dog is remodeling.

I'm trying Jude's "Coma Effect" to see if I can build up all the girls in the plane that day.

The Importance of Being AND

For so much of my life, my deepest internal struggle has been figuring out which lunch table to sit at. 

Remember the junior high lunch room?  If you loved to read and you did your homework, you sat with the Smart Girls. If you liked sports, you sat with the Jocks. If you puffed cigarettes in the bathroom and wore black eyeliner, you sat with the Greasers. If your sweater matched your knee socks and your hair was perfectly straight and you wore a bra (but not a very big one), well, you might be able to sit with the Popular Girls.

I loved to read and to play first base. I had the right bra and the wrong hair. I thought black eyeliner was scary and loved those Greaser girls who were my snow fort buddies in third grade. So where was I supposed to sit?

By high school, the boundaries between tables relaxed. You were probably relieved. I was bewildered. A cheerleader AND she smokes pot? A Freak AND she got a merit scholarship to college?  A Smart Girl AND she wears overalls and work boots... AND black eyeliner?

And.  A concept that has been as difficult for me in adulthood as it was in junior high.  It seems like most people who create wear And with great ease and I envy their freedom.  At 58, I am far better at it than I used to be, but every once in awhile, the rumble from the lunch room starts anew.  

This time, it started with my stitching. 

Over the past six months, I've been a Spirit Cloth junkie. My stitches are starting to tell my stories. They have coaxed me back to my writing.In fact,like so many people who follow Jude, I find that those little lines of invisible basting are connecting me to myself in ways I cannot describe. So all has been copacetic in the Just Going lane. 

Until my most recent applique project came back after months at the machine quilter. 

excuse the photo, you'd need a helicopter to get this right

I took Kim McLean's Lollipop pattern and colored entirely within the lines. All of the fabric is commercially printed and none of it is recycled (I originally intended to use only fabric scraps from work but that challenge quickly went by the wayside.)  In short, it is as different from my current work as it could be. 

And here's the truth: the contrast between those two worlds knocked me off balance. Where am I supposed to sit? 

Which got me thinking about And.  A world where all those things could be true AND the work remains full of Spirit.  Because this cloth introduced me to the peace of handwork and the joy of unbridled color. I started it in 2008 trying to match every last leaf to Kim's pattern and finished it in 2012 letting the circles fall where they may.  I love the old ladies dancing in their sundresses...

...the redheaded boy shyly offering a bouquet....

...and my favorite, the guy showing off with his basketballs. 

My balance is back. I love this quilt. I am calling it Lollipop AND Me.  

It's amazing what a girl can learn in the lunch room. 

Another Day Without Sun

I repainted this bird feeder last summer in the same colors as our house.

 It has been grey here for so long that even the finches and chickadees 

don't feel like getting out of bed. 

There's some kind of TV show called "Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

Science fiction no doubt.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Greetings from Detroit...the postcard you send when you live in Detroit (or more likely, thereabouts).

I left Detroit after college...after years of reading the New York Times Classified Section every Sunday and wondering about this unbelievable land where there were actually want ads for artists, dancers, musicians...and writers. My brother saw the musician part and he soon followed.

Nothing was wrong with THAT picture. My folks came to visit, I went back for 30,000 mile psychological tune-ups, for weddings and funerals, to show off my babies and to dive into my beautiful fresh water Great Lakes (What is wrong with you ocean people, have you not noticed the salt??)

And life worked for us all.

The wrong part comes now, 37 years later. Because life at age 85 works differently, my parents want to be near me.  The assurance that I will land there as soon as a plane can take me is no longer enough...they feel frail, they are frail.  And so they decided it was time to leave.  Next month, they will be in an apartment near me here in Pennsylvania. They will leave behind everything they know, for although they are well-travelled, Detroit(ish) has been their home for their whole lives.They leave their brothers and sister, their bridge games and Torah study groups, the library where Mom used to work and the high school buddies Dad sees twice a week. 

They leave their son's grave.

Mom says she feels fine about leaving, she is mostly overwhelmed by the Stuff Management of a move and I can ease that for her. Dad moves through all the decisions like the hero he has become to me. When pressed, he tells me, "well, every once in a while, I do wonder what it will be like."

So this is what is heartbreakingly wrong with this picture.  I left home on a wind and a whim in the space between teen and adult and now, they are paying the price.  And they are not alone.  Aging parents around the country are becoming immigrants in a stage when it is oh so difficult to rip down and rebuild. And it is not because their offspring were seeking religious freedom, arable land, or sanctuary from bombs and bullets.

Its because they needed to be who they were. A writer. A musician. Fleeing from suburbia, flyng toward who knows what?

 I know I didn't do anything wrong, I know I am finding Grace in the role I have now taken on. I know I am by their sides in the ways they need it most.

It just seems so damn sad. Doesn't it?

Three Things Converge

Three things have converged this month.  First...this photo from last summer, when Jude was making rainbows from things in her path.

With kind permission, Jude Hill 2012

Second, the words to a song I heard on the radio: "You are where you have been."  (Still can't find the source of it, anyone know?)

And third, cloth weavings that I started after my knee replacement when I couldn't do much of anything besides sit in one place. I just cranked them out, one after another, without knowing why.  All I knew is that I felt so peaceful, so healed in the ripping, weaving, and stitching. (Don't know why this happens but it never fails. Anyone know why, or perhaps who really cares why?)

So that led to this fruit-juicy sandwich.

When you lay out a representative from each color, you get stuff like this:

 So these three things have converged into my Story Cloth.  "I Am Where I Have Been."  

The weavings will dance in some sort of spectrum around a central cloth (not sure what yet)...on each one, I want to stitch a chapter of where I have been.  Maybe a path that wanders through each and walks into the center. 

And where have I been in 58 years that defines me? In the northern Michigan forests, in the wilderness of Israel, in daughterhood, motherhood, in love, in divorce, in infertility and adoption, in the wrong life, in the greatest romance in the world, in Hebrew and the chant of Torah, in intimate giggles with girls, in back seats with boys, in the smell of my horse's snort, in high heels, in dreams of cowgirls and ghost towns...see how it goes?

So its like telling the world you are on a diet (oh yeah, been there, too. Like maybe twice a year). I want to do this.