The Thing You Fear

A quote that originated in a Virginia school for wayward boys and wound its way through a long chain to Pennsylvania has never left my awareness: "the thing you fear is probably the thing you need to do the most."

Keep that in mind as I tell you the story that begins with this.

 Which goes with this.

Every Monday, both of these go with me to visit the residents of a local nursing home.

No, you are not misremembering. I did say in some spring post that we entered Therapy Dogdom in order to work with young children who were having problems reading. But while we were waiting for local schools to return from summer vacation, I saw that the events of my life had been slowly edging me toward one of my last remaining Zones of Discomfort.

That zone circles inward from the unwell elderly in general...to the institutionalized elderly in particular...and, right at the very core, the demented old person.

I left home for college and really never returned as my grandparents' generation moved from vibrant and Yiddish-accented sparks of life into the frail homebound. I did visit my grandmother. She was once a thriving one-woman black market, who routinely used her "little old Jewish lady with babushka" act at the Detroit-Canada border to smuggle gold, liquor and agricultural sundries past the clueless Customs Agents (sometimes with us kids in tow).

Now, she sat in a fog in a leatherette chair, in a row of women deep in their fogs in their chairs.  She opened her lips for my mother to spoon in strawberry ice cream.

I turned my eyes and refused to open them in that direction again.

But since my parents moved here, I am front and center in their aging. I try to surrender to the cognitive decline in one, the physical decline in the other. I try to understand who they have become, who they are becoming and yet ...I notice that none of us makes jokes about nursing homes anymore.

At the same time, this book crossed my path.

(And in a further demonstration of synchronicity, the movie will be released this Friday!)

Alice is diagnosed in her late 50s with early-onset Alzheimer's and this novel, written by a Harvard neurophysiologist, takes you on the wings of the disease into her mind. I was afraid to read it but found it startling in its tenderness. Then, the incredibly moving film Still Mine mysteriously appeared in our Netflix Watch List and I saw dementia from inside of a marriage in the hands of the lovely, lovely Genevieve Bujold (remember  Anne of a Thousand Days?)

It just seemed I was being invited to jump. Right into the center.

So I called the local nursing home and, in the last days of summer, Clutch and I went for our job interview. The volunteer coordinator walked me through all three units (when you strip away their euphemistic titles, they are assisted living, skilled nursing care, and dementia care) and invited me to drop by any of them on my weekly visit. Yeah, well, I thought, we would just stick with the assisted living residents for now.

Except that when the next Monday rolled around, I remembered the quote. The thing you fear is probably the thing you need to do the most.

I pushed open those big fire doors to the dementia unit... and I haven't looked back.

I wish I could show you pictures of my friends there, and in the other two units as well.  Of course, I cannot. I can tell you stories...of women who used to sew all their childrens' clothes or work for the local IRS, who were married to men who used to train police dogs or farm the land that is now our hospital...who claw through their strokes or their confusion to let Clutch kiss them....who I think are trying to tell me they want to pet Clutch but are actually yelling at me to stop standing in front of the TV!

And yes, many of them are lined up in those rows, those nightmarish rows. But Grace (the virtue, not the blogger) has come into my life in the form of a drooling boxer, who knows how to just be...with any one in any place. And so I follow his lead and I stay with them in their rows..in who they are...however they are.

In their stories that involve a father who died in WWII one week but prevented her from getting a dog the next...in Thanksgiving dinners that "were at somebody's house but they wouldn't tell me who" or in agitated recounting of "the really large lady that came in here and scared me." In memories of scoring a dining room table with five leaves at a secondhand shop, of going on Sunday drives so Dad could see how all the other farmers' crops were doing.

This week, I visited a 90-year-old woman who splits her time between sending handwritten advice to the Democratic National Committee and working her way through all the Nancy Drew books she never had time to read in her younger years. We had a spirited discussion about Nancy's beau Ned Nickerson and why they never seem to get it on.

She gives Clutch a fortune cookie before we go. This was his fortune this week:
 

Of course, the ability to be with residents in who they are is easy for me, because they are strangers and I am not stuck in the memory of What Was.  But it is damn good practice for me, so that perhaps I can stay there...in that place...when it comes time to be with those that I have loved my whole life.

Epilogue: I googled the "thing you fear most quote" and found out that it got pretty mangled on its way to me from Virginia. It actually comes from Mark Twain, who said it better: Do the thing you fear most and death of fear is certain. 

A Weekend of Wonder: Part 2

Even as I mercilessly edited the Collection, it became apparent that not everything would fit into the box. Not even everything from this trip, let alone from the 20 or so years since we first began the Project.  I put some of the Collection on loan throughout the house:

I washed and labelled all the bits and pieces of fabric scraps that I've found out west and on my hikes everywhere else...

...and decided they will go in a handmade book. I sought the wise counsel of bookmaker extraordinaire Mo Crow and she's just waiting in the wings (hee hee) as I get this project I mean Project underway.

But the big news is what I found in the corner of my studio. Its kind of hard to miss, and it had been there for years, getting full of stuff.

But this time I saw it for what it really is: a real, live Cabinet of Wonder. Hot Damn! I moved my much beloved Indigo Girl Cloth from Grace to its rightful place next to Saskia's Little Bird...

And I set to work. My successes with the box freed me somehow and I hit another book, this time about my absolute favorite artist:

I love assemblage and have felt the urge to do it bubbling away for years. Why else would I pick up used bingo numbers at the flea market? But, once again, Assemblage intimidated me. (You getting the theme here?) But Cabinet of Wonders? Hah! I am Mighty Curator of my Collection. And so here it goes:

These guys from Deadhorse Bay really want to play, as soon as they are dry.

This weekend, I learned the etymology of two words:

• Museum: a place of study and sanctuary for the Muses
• Amateur: one who loves

 I really learned them.

A Weekend of Wonder: Part 1

Cabinets of wonder, that is.

It started with this act of wonder that Himself made for me on our return from Idaho this summer.

The man is a wizard with a woodburner. I would have set it on fire,which is why I am not allowed to play with his toys.

He based it on a chest we saw in a small rural museum in Idaho, one that I thought would be perfect to store the artifacts that seem to follow us home on our Vandalization of the American West Project. (Its a Project. That means its not petty larceny.)

I figured filling the box would be a good Snow Day project and so I just left it alone. But, in truth, it intimidated me. That's because I wanted it to be more than just a shoebox where memories are stored...or a scrapbook where they are arranged creatively.  I wanted the experience of opening this box to transmit the spirit of adventure, the urge to discover, that pushes the two of us to see and touch What Was.

I had no idea of how to do that. I had no idea of how to even think about how to do that. My usual approach to creating pretty much mirrors Clutch's approach to eating food morsels on the floor:  go to it with gusto and decide afterwards whether it was the right strategy. But the difference between the dog and me is that when it doesn't work, he just throws up. Me? I suffer knots of frustration in my gut and usually just abandon ship in defeat. And THEN I throw up.

This time, Himself stepped in and suggested I prepare...prepare myself. He pointed me to a book:

Its an incredibly photographed look at curio collecting from all possible facets. It even had photographs of a thespian ancestor of Saskia's Old Bird King, dressed for his role as Tinkerbell in a Viking production of Peter Pan:

Somewhere in the paragraphs of fancy art theory I picked up exactly what I needed: the act of experiencing means more than just seeing or touching. First, I needed to call it a collection, I mean Collection. That means I became the curator...and my museum of adventure would be a Cabinet of Wonder.

Second, I needed to imbue the Collection itself with a sense of discovery in how you get to see or touch it.  I still wasn't sure how this would happen but somehow, I just believed that it would. From Saturday afternoon through Saturday evening, I sorted every object...touching, grouping, getting to know.

And then I reached for all the old boxes,the cloth scraps, the handmade paper, the strings--everything I could get my hands on that I had collected for years and years without ever knowing why.

You never know when you'll need a troll doll, apparently.

 Sunday began in the early morning and ended when the Hungry Woodburner showed up for dinner. I don't have words to explain what happened but I hope the pictures of my work in its  very early stages do it for me.

First, you open the lid and slide the tray...

And here's what you will find.

Each bears a decorated label, archiving its former home. And,for the most part, you need to do something to access what lies within.

This holds bits of hardware and glass in bag made from one of the first cloths I made for What If Diaries

Holds bits of rocks taken from bottom of hot springs, with rolled up map of how to get there.

Cloth from site sewed into a wrapping...

...that houses a jar found at Deadhorse Bay, which houses glass shards from Idaho. Screw still moves up and down!

I am master of the hot glue gun but Himself still won't let me use the woodburner.

But wait! There's more!

Speaking of Old Stuff

My ex-husband used to say that my idea of a large crowd and his idea of a small intimate gathering involved exactly the same number of people. I've been that way about parties from the start.

That's two year old me. In red, naturally.

This weekend, the Divine Ms S hosted a birthday party in honor of my 60th birthday (which is actually this Wednesday, but Himself only socializes on Saturdays between 6:15 and 9:30 pm.) I made the guest list and went crazy:

Six other people!!! My parents, Himself, Mr and Mrs E, and the Divine Ms S. Unfortunately, Dr J (the gynecologist, not the basketball player) couldn't make it.  If I add in Other Julie in Jerusalem, the list of my friends is complete. Actually, if I subtract my mom and dad (I was raised on two refrains, one of which was "we are NOT your friends, we are your parents...")...

...then I have five friends.

Actually, four girlfriends and one husband.

Parts of me really envy people who have housefuls of friends. However, when I actually tiptoe into socializing with that much intensity, my head spins, my throat closes and I feel yanked off my center.  I do know that my friendships are incredibly intimate and since it takes time...real time...to feed and water these intimacies, I think this might be it for my Lifetime Guest List.

The intimacy gives birth to wonders. After a sweet toast, my father stood (that alone borders on wonderous, since he is pretty clumsy to begin with and 87 years haven't helped any) and told us all about the day I was born.  Who gets to be 60 and hears her father talk about the evening Mom's water broke? And even at this age, I felt warmed by my daddy's love for me when he recalled seeing me for the first time and "all I could see was two giant blue eyes."

The Divine Ms S outdid herself on creating  her signature warmth and beauty with color...

Say hello to E's Cheese Cutter Guy on left

 ...and the sweetest of little touches just for me.

The flames are different colors!

I take no issue with turning 60, these days number among the best in my life. But I am overwhelmed by disbelief. Didn't I just have on a little red outfit with a party hat and a chocolate cake with marshmellow bunnies? Didn't I?

Old Stuff...

I've noticed a common theme for how I am spending my time these days: old stuff.

 

Old Stuff #1

When I am in my forced march through Octagon Hell (ok, I've learned the hard way that 200+ of anything except Peanut M & Ms is just way too many), I listen to free podcasts. This month's favorite is a joint project from the BBC and the British Museum:

You can find out more about it and even listen to episodes here.  The "rules" of the program were that museum and BBC muckamucks would choose 100--and only 100--objects from the gazillions that are in the museum collection. (To get some idea of how hard that would be, know that it took us three days just to see what was on display there. Himself is still trying to figure out a way to get locked in overnight so he can see what is stashed in the basement crypts.)

The objects had to start from the beginnings of human history (two million years ago) and come up to the present day. And they had to come from everywhere in the world, with the goal of "trying to address the many aspects of human experience...to tell us about whole societies, not just the rich and powerful within them. ...the humble things of everyday life as well as great works of art."

Each episode is just a few minutes long and features a complete audio documentary--experts musing, ambient sounds, the whole works. The object itself becomes a tool to explore intriguing concepts that I haven't really ever thought about before but in many ways form the vertebrae of our existence. Like this one.

Yeah, another clay pot. This one from Japan, about 5000 BC. But the program asks you to really, really think about what happened when, 10,000 years before that, some lump of clay wound up in the campfire in a shape that could hold stuff. And what happened? Oh, just the ability to store food that baskets could not protect from insects or mice...the ability to eat stuff that had been inedible or toxic raw...the ability to serve up soup or stew. Or ice cream. A complete overhaul in diet, that's what.

The Pot changed everything and it is the damn Wheel that gets all the applause.

Here's another favorite: The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus.

I love it for its title, inked in red on the front page: "The Correct Method of Reckoning, for Grasping the Meaning of Things, and Knowing Everything--Obscurities and All Secrets." It taught Egyptian civil servants from about 1550 BC how to solve 84 practical problems that still trip up us lowly homeowners today. Here's a good one for you who are tired of throwing out yet another chewed- through cereal box:

"In seven houses there are seven cats. Each cat catches seven mice. If each mouse were to eat seven ears of corn and each of corn, if sown, were to produce seven gallons of grain, how many things are mentioned in total?"

I was absent on the day they taught that at my junior high, but don't worry. The papyrus shows the answer in red, along with all work.

Spending my days with these objects triggered a thought: what are the 100 objects that tell MY history? I started a list and jot them down as they appear in my brain...my Shirley Temple doll with the hair that I straightened, my rock that looks like an Oreo that I picked up in my summers at camp in Northern Michigan, my mother's Gold Metal Flour sifter, the copy of The Prophet that my famously untouchy/unfeely mom gave me in 9th grade. My Earth Shoes and guitar, my briefcase and Filofax...my saddle and bridle. Try it for yourself. 

 

Old Stuff #2

This semester, I am auditing a course at the local rabbinical college called "Biblical Core." The professor is a whizbang biblical scholar who knows all things ancient Near East. (She read us a poem in the original Akkadian the other day and everyone oo'ed and ahhed until I pointed out that no one in the room would know if she made a mistake.You can say stuff like that when you are auditing.)

The course is increasing our proficiency in biblical Hebrew, which bears roughly the same relationship to Modern Hebrew as Canterbury Tales does to modern English literature. That's why every Saturday, my kitchen table looks like this:

 We translate roughly 20 lines at home and then explore them in class, where we learn historical context for the text. What was happening in that particular society to make someone write that section? What pre-judaic myths lie beneath the stories? And, most intriguing, where are the misinterpretations? Here's a good one:

This is a verse from Leviticus that you may have run into: You shall love your neighbor like yourself. Or that's what we've all been taught that it says, anyway.  That translation makes sense, both grammatically and because it sure seems like a good idea, no? It also concludes a long list of other very nice moral marching orders, like not insulting the deaf or tripping up the blind.

BUT hold on. It is equally plausible grammatically that it says something completely different, something way further down on the niceness scale. It could actually translate as "you shall love your neighbor who is like yourself." Not nice at all, but invaluable if you are trying to preserve your new little band of monotheists against the guys with all the gods one hill over.

I love being up to my elbows in words written nearly 3,000 years ago. I have often wrestled with the fact that the spiritual text of my people was in truth cobbled together over years and years and is full of mispellings and editorial failings rather than mysteries meant for us to unfold. But the ability to read the original helps me love the human inaccuracies for themselves...they are the footprints of the real live people who molded generations of stories and archetypes, who wrestled with the shortcomings and the beauty of human nature, who put it all together in a way that has managed to survive when I live in a world where a book goes in and out of print within two years.

I love old stuff.

Walking the Disclosure Tightrope

I started this blog almost two years (and 89 posts) ago.

Back then, I intended it as a way to document--and to share--the work I was creating in all of Jude Hill's classes.  It started as a crafts bulletin board of sorts, but one that had extra space for my thoughts, doubts, or pride in a particular piece. And, to my amazement, the bulletin board immediately talked back, in the form of unusually perceptive, often sidesplitting, and always supportive comments from creators around the world.

The back and forth created a link...a net between us...an inter-net.

Women I may never meet feel to me like an intimate community and they...you... have become my daily bread. (And listen up, those of you who muse on the mysteries of this internet relationship thing.  I carried on a wild online romance with a guy I never met and eventually wound up married to him, so I fully trust the reality of these feelings.) This trust led me to start tacking up more personal things on the bulletin board. My dogs, my home, my trips...and then, my moods, my anxieties....my sorrows.


Which, in case you were wondering what the hell I am trying to say, brings me to what I am trying to say.

It is this: I often feel like I am walking a disclosure tightrope. I feel on solid ground when it comes to protecting others in my world from my little camera and my big mouth. But where exactly is the balance when it comes to me? Where is the line between way too much personal information and Truth that could create more intimacy? Grace wrote this last night, at the very time this question was circling around my brain:

 "...if you would ever want to know someone's Story,  if you would ever ASK them about it,  you should need to be prepared to listen for days and months and maybe even years. You should be prepared to LISTEN to ALL of IT,  all the seemingly fragmented threads and keep listening,  keep paying such close attention that you become familiar with the fragmented threads and begin to see how they tangle to become the whole,  to become the Experience of the Story."

I guess the answer lies in how much of my story I want known. But that is a different issue from how much story I want to tell. Because the truth is that writing here feels exhilarating. I had stopped writing when I left my career and getting back to it felt like finding a missing limb. When I write, I feel stretched and limbered and deeply sated, the way my muscles feel after exercise. When I don't write, my soul feels fat.

And like most exercise, the deeper I go, the better I feel. But...well, you get it, right?

Hence my question. To myself, to you who blog. Do you run into this question? How do you answer it for yourselves?

 

Saying Goodbye

The grapes have checked out.

The zinnias are on their last lap.

The beans don't have a clue about what's coming...

But I do. And even though the light splashes over the leaves around me like they were lit from within, even though the reds and golds and tawny browns paper my world...I can't help feeling the loss of the "stay outside" season with somewhat of a dry, closed throat.

And I am not alone. This morning, the sign was crying.

Back to the Birds

Oddly enough, while my soul was going through the spiritual laundromat, my hands have been busy with the simplest of stitches.

Or maybe it is not so odd.

I made this little window hanging to help remind a dear one of her intention, which is to be more like the sun in the lives of those around her.

 And of course I am still having a love affair with my birds, who now are six.

I took the time to learn how to do the fancy-shmancy embroidery stitches Sue Spargo recommends in the pattern. I am shocked, shocked I say, by how much I love doing all this intricate stuff since I tend to think of myself as the proverbial bull in the needlecraft shop.   But look how much personality they give to my flock:

Drizzle stitch make hair!

Pistil stitch makes a garden

Woven picot stitch makes beaks

Bullion knots make...well, whatever this is.

And just in case you're keeping track, I have 208 of the 276 octagons I need for the wedding one-block wonder completed. I am counting on winter camp for the rest. Ok, gotta go, off to the dentist to replace a cap that just can't handle the amount of Atomic Fireballs I eat.