I'm having fun Sunday mosaic #2
The last farmer's market of the season with pumpkins on the sidewalk, the tables heaped with squashes and knobby brussle sprout stalks. Already the lady who sells honey from her small batch of backyard hives is gone, and textiles---woolly hats and scarves fill up stalls where in mid summer sunflower bouquets and fancy heirloom tomatoes jostled for attention.
The sun, bright overhead against a backdrop of blue, makes the leaves shine golden even though the foliage season was a bust here, with a killing frost before the leaves could turn to crimson the way they usually do. We walk down to the lake with coffee and ham and egg sandwiches, still hot.
Bean, bundled in layers of fluffy fleece and mittens, screams furiously every time we add a layer, but naps contentedly as we sit together on the swing, kicking our legs and watching a hubbub of mallards quacking on the water. All the boat slips are empty now and white gulls perch on the power supply boxes.
Across the lake, a band of snow still on the mountains, but the air is warm in the sun. By midmorning we take a run, wearing shorts and hats and long sleeves. The edges of the path are slick and yellow with fallen leaves, wet from weeks of rain. Other runners are out. Everyone smiles as they pass, soaking up sun like lizards.
Downtown some shops have their doors open, and on the sidewalk a dog lolls, tummy up. Today teenagers are wearing wigs and bits and pieces of costumes. They walk down the promenade giggling, smoking cigarettes and looking self conscious. Yesterday the big parade brought throngs of kids dressed as cows, superheroes, witches and firemen and doting parents; tomorrow, trick-or-treaters are sure to come knocking at our door.
In the afternoon we take a drive southwest of here, to look at a farmhouse, then land, and lastly the town we'd maybe like to settle near. 180 years old with a gnarled apple tree out back, the farmhouse is a dream. A clawfoot tub, a laundry shoot, a huge hearth in the dining room. But as we leave we can't help but notice how the unplanned urban sprawl has crept up: farmers selling acreage; subdivisions encroaching on the view.
A sunset for the first time in months, soft pinks spreading out across the sky like delicate gown hung up for airing. The waterfall pounding below the bridge in town sends whole trees over it's crest. They gather at it's base, circling, bumping up against each other like toothpicks. Bean stares wide eyed. I play with aperture, noticing the word Bean's been saying all week on a sign on the window of an empty store.
We drive home in early darkness, daylight saving's time has set us back. We talk together quietly as Bean takes a late nap. Stars are above us as we bring our things inside. We heat leftover lasagna and then eat pumpkin pie.
The amazingly talented Nichola gave birth to a beautiful baby girl on Thursday. Welcome to the world, Esme & congratulations mama! Nicohla also organized a postcard swap last month and, being a sucker for foreign stamps, paper mail, and all things artsy, I was excited to participate. The only rules were that they had to be handmade and postmarked by the 31st. As usual, I'm cutting it close with the deadline. (In theory, though I finished them today! they won''t be postmarked until November 1st.)
I wanted each postcard to be unique, and yet similar--so I used the same media (acrylic and watercolor paints & a block print) and colors, but varied the theme for each as my whimsy dictated. I really had fun making these---allowing my paintbrush to follow my mind into abstraction. I also really liked the idea of including a fish print in each---because fish are sort of a signature art piece for me.
I would love to do another postcard swap---so if you would like to participate please let me know in the comments and I'll email you with the details.
Friday afternoon
We're in the midst of househunting---not for this year, but for next spring. A place with land---pastures, wooded areas, perhaps a stream. We moved north to find this---and today we spent a couple hours driving around and then walking out along trails onto land that we tried to imagine as ours someday.
It's a bizarre process---trying to imagine something that doesn't yet exist. You have to be half lunatic, half dreamer to survive it. Yet it also fills me with a giddy breathlessness as I imagine where my garden might go. Where a swing might hang from a tall maple for Bean, where we might sit on the porch in the morning with coffee watching wild turkies or racoons raid the seed below the bird feeder.
With each place we visit, the home I imagine is becoming slightly less a figment of my imagination and slightly more tangible. Click on the photo above to view a few of the sights from our rambles today.
"Becoming a mother is a trial by fire"
Growing up, I bucked up against my mother fiercely. I felt similar to my father with my academic, intellectual habits: late nights devouring books and talking about ideas. But I almost felt scornful of my mother who was quiet and shy. She would ask me to keep my voice down in public places, and when we fought, she would use silence to win every time. In many ways I simply took my mother for granted. She was just my mother---the one who cooked meals, and drove me places. It was only after my father died that I started to get to know the woman she really is. Perhaps she too began to know herself then, differently, finally out of my father's shadow.
And, though I think my mother would say that she is still unsure of her own voice, after so many hearing my father's, she is becoming someone whose words I admire. She observes the world carefully, noticing the smallest of things; constantly connecting the big picture and the small. Since Bean, I have grown to understand that her quiet attitude of giving and her selflessness came not from lack of self confidence, but from her vast love for her children.
Last night she wrote me this:
Ah yes, Christina, you are getting it: motherhood. Nothing prepares you for it, that is one sure thing. I cannot imagine that heart surgery is more intricate or painful than the push/pull of a mother's being as it continues to form a womb around her child. A kangaroo pouch would be so much simpler! The gods give us women this incredible learning around compassion. Of course dads feel it too, but, I believe, in a different way. Their very skin hasn't been stretched beyond belief leaving memory marks. Nor has their body carried the growing weight of a child. I think men in battle, caring for their wounded, must feel a similar stretching of their being---as buddies die or are profoundly wounded in front of them. Maybe that is why motherhood, and war, have existed down the ages. There are many ways to experience this selflessness. But becoming a mother is a trial by fire.
Sick
Nothing prepared me for this: the fragility and fiery protectiveness I'd feel when confronted with caring for my sick child. Bean awoke last night about an hour after going to sleep---crying inconsolably, hysterically, till mucus ran in two small rivers from his nose. He cried hard and frantically, throwing his body about in my arms as I tried to offer a breast, or hold his hands under running water, or show him the cat---my usual ploys to calm him when he's upset. But for a long while nothing consoled him—a long enough while enough for DH to call pediatrician and then make a trip to the store for children's Tylenol.
Finally I put John Gorka on and danced with him, slowly, in the semi-dark of the living room lit only from the streetlights outside the window. Finally his breathing grew regular. He sucked in the last puckered sobs. His head dropped to my chest.
Then we sat together, his body pressed tightly to mine---wrapped in blankets in the rocking chair, and I rocked him until his body grew limp with sleep. And then I kept rocking, never wanting to let go.
Later in the night he woke again: crying, sobbing, wailing. Again I put the music on and danced with him till his cries turned to whimpers, and then I curled with him in the big white armchair in the living room, burrowed under a down comforter, listening to the music until he finally slept. I carried him to bed and he slept nestled up against the heat of our bodies, his small feet pressed into my belly.
He slept then until morning, and woke happy, with a running nose, wanting to be carried all day.
Nothing prepared me for this: the quivering feeling of guilt, when I look into his sweet sick face. What could I have done wrong? What small neglect?
By mid morning I realized I was sick too, and we napped for hours, our cheeks next to each other---his hair damp with sweat. And later, he was content to ride about in the sling on my hip---something he almost never does because he wants to be moving about, exploring, active, pulling up on things.
I'm not sure how to begin to comprehend the immenseness of this feeling: this love, this guilt, this exhaustion. And yet a part of me realizes it isn't about comprehending at all. It's simply about being there in the dark, dancing with my son up against my heart.
Self Portrait Tuesday: Life Documentary Series #4
MORNING It is dark when I wake up. Rain pouring down, smudging the window with tiny rivers. It has been three weeks of rain.
I shower. The rooms in my small apartment are dim and blue and quiet, except for my baby's excited babble.
I dry my damp skin and wait for the collection of memories and present moments about my life to gather in my mind, making the daily mosaic whole of who I am. I dress.
The solid metal of my belt buckle. Jeans. These are the things I put on every day, that in some small way, make me who I am.
My son crawls up my legs. He needs dressing too. He asks for every fragment of my soul. All of my love, right now, this minute.
My hair is wet. Yesterday the hair dresser asked, "What products do you use?" I shrugged, "Nothing. Some days I'm lucky if I get it brushed." Her laughter tinkled through the salon, polite, young.
The heady earthy scent of coffee comes to me from the kitchen. Already on the floor, a myriad of blocks. I breathe in. I breathe out. I am here. Now.
Where the images went
Over the past few months I've discovered, again, that I am an artist. I knew this truth as a child, and I kept sketchbooks voraciously. I drew the everyday things of my life, and I'd sit for hours using crayons to imagine places I'd never been. I could lose myself inside the landscapes by artists I loved. At the museum, I'd be the one still staring after everyone else had gone on with the tour.
After high school, I went to Germany for a year where I learned silk screening, and produced vibrant, delicate scarves with sea horses or cherry blossoms or swallows in flight moving across them. I loved using salt: watching the paint marbleize where each grain landed. I used acrylics there too, in my long afternoons between work hours. I painted orchids, and a map of the world.
Before I came to college I spent two weeks in Harlem with people who had HIV. We did rapid contour drawings in charcoal: impermanent and bold. My sketchbook was full of figures dancing across the pages. People's faces, hands, eyes, done in graphite or pen.
But once I settled into my life as a student something shifted. My internal landscape became crowded with words.
I poured my inner imagry into my notebooks: word drunk, over stimulated, and exhausted. I wrote crappy poetry and some good poetry. I took some writing classes and gradually I learned to hone a decent sentence. I grappled with the stories of my life. I learned to interview. I worked sometimes for the college paper. I began thinking of myself as a writer. But after my required art class freshman year I stopped painting.
When I graduated, I plunged headlong into the world of teaching big things to small children. Their faces, each an entire landscape of wonder, watched me as I spoke--living into my words, my breath, my laughter. I wrote things every day in the context of the classroom.
I modeled writing that mattered to me, that was real, and packed with details that they could care about: the scratching sounds of pencils in motion; the sobbing wails of the angry girl with the nappy hair in dozens of small pigtails sprouting out of her head outside the kindergarten classroom; the smell of popcorn from the teacher's lounge or lunch in the cafeteria where they served green hot dogs, nearly a foot long, and salad drowned with dressing.
I told my students stories. I used these narratives to teach plot, suspense, figurative language, and metaphor. And I drew pictures of bivalve mollusks, of tidal marshes, of maple trees in autumn, of shag bark hickories in spring to accompany the hands-on social studies and science curriculum I designed.
But teaching pulled from me every ounce of my creative energy, and when I'd ride the train home, often as the sun was setting, I'd have the energy only to shut my eyes, or to scribble a few half hearted observations: the lady with the bouffant hairdo and the to-red cheeks who talked loudly, as though no one else were in the crowded car, to her travel partner who was standing in the vestibule, checking his watch and fidgeting with his leather gloves.
When I had my son, for the first few months I staggered about writing in my notebook, start time 11:15 right breast, nursed for 3 minutes, then stopped, but I quickly gave this up just started trusting my instincts.
Things evened out. My baby grew. I got some sleep. We moved. I started running, finding a rhythm, remembering to breathe. And I had hours, interrupted, fragmented hours, punctuated by squeals or roars or wailing, but hours none the less, to start letting my mind unwind.
I was tightly wound. And as the filaments of my mind unfurled, images started flooding in. I longed for paint. I bought a few on-sale brushes. I filled pages with collages and quick heavy strokes. And then I started to remember why I was an artist first.
Unwinding
I breathe in. I breathe out. I am calling to myself, looking for centeredness. It is past 9 p.m. The house is still tonight. Tues on my iPod. Stan Getz. I drink the second half of a glass of Pinot Noir from Chalone Vinyard in foggy Montery, California. The chair creaks under my shifting weight. The cat licks his belly and darkness settles down around te windows.
I think of figs, fresh and ripe, that I haven't eaten since I was eleven, at church, picked from the tree behind it's stuccoed walls. I didn't like them then, though I love them sweet and sticky and dried.
I write with a fat-tipped sharpie, letting go of control. Letting my messy writing spill across the page, trying to unwind after the past two days of inlaws and house hunting. Almost the house we want---but not quite.
I am trying to TRUST THE UNIVERSE. Already it has brought so much. My life is full and I am greatful. I gather up moments of stillness.
A small sampling of our visit to the farm today.
Illustration Friaday: Cold
It has rained here for two weeks straight, and the air has turned cold. I've almost grown used to indirect light of these grey days, and squinted yesterday when the afternoon the sun burst through.
We went running, wearing hats and fleece, and the light in the sky and on the lake was so beautiful it nearly took our breath away. The hills were red with turning maples, and in the light of the setting sun they were on fire. The clouds, backlit and dark. Leaves blowing in windy spirals.
We ran past the beach---where in summer throngs of people with beers and kids with plastic sandcastle buckets gathered around barbecue pits---and the picnic tables were upturned and stacked for winter in a heap. Along the path, sumac leaves the shape of spear tips, had turned to burnished gold. And in the sky above us, geese in long Vs moving south, kept calling out.
I couldn't stop running: my lungs sucking in the cold air, feet falling evenly on the wet pavement. We ran past dark puddles where I could see leaves, sunken like yellow boats, below the surface. I couldn't stop, because those glorious fleeting moments of late autumn sun and clouds, cold air meeting the heat of my cheeks, made me want to cry.
Self Portrait Tuesday: Life Documentary Series #3
Acting silly, the wind in our hair.
In a rare snatched moment of just us.
Tagged
The incredibly talented Carla tagged me. I'm supposed to list 20 random things about myself and then tag as many people as it took minutes for me to write my list. I did play by the rules in that the list is random. It took me about 20 minutes to write however, so I'll not be tagging 20 people. Although that might be fun... 20 random facts:
1) Encarta's definition of topography: a study or detailed description of the various features of any object or entity and the relationships between them.
2) Things I'm into this month include: raspberry doughnuts, corduroys, chocolate colored sweaters, packages in the mail, beeswax candles, and wine with pretty labels.
3) I forget to eat and then get really moody and totally annoyed that I'm hungry.
4) I intensely dislike having to talk to people I don't know on the phone (except it was delightful to talk to Elaine, who has a lovely musical laugh, and who sounds just like I'd imagined: strong, wise, and insightful.)
5) I stay up way too late at night.
6) My second serious boyfriend in high school once told me to "Go downstairs to the kitchen and help my mom cook me a nice steak."
7) At the time I saw nothing wrong with his request. Now I'm mortified.
8) I was born in Colorado.
9) I have taken care of a boa constrictor twice in my life.
10) One of my favorite flowers is the Zinnia.
11) When I'm by water, I skip stones.
12) I can't paint without getting it all over my hands.
13) I can't eat popsicles without getting the juice all over my shirt.
14) I like Thai iced tea, Mango Lassi, Chai, and Mexican Hot Chocolate.
15) I don't like fresh figs, brussel sprouts, or okra.
16) I love going skinny dipping, especially at night.
17) I'm a bit of a magazine whore: I have a shameful amount of subscriptions coming to my house (Yes Jillian, that includs People!) but I rarely watch T.V.
18) I'm not afraid to admit I like froufrou drinks like zinfandel and wine coolers.
19) I have taken extended backpacking trips in Pueto Rico, France, Switzerland, Germany and the Pacific Coastal U.S.A.
20) I say prayers.
I'm tagging (if they want to play, or have already been tagged..): Blackbird, Melanie, Steph, Fuzzypeach, and Jill
8 Months
Dear amazing standing Bean, You are an unbelievable eight months old today. You can stand. You did this first in the middle of the night, pulling up on your crib bars, and grinning this huge gummy grin. Now you pull up on everything: your high chair, the laundry basket, the vacuum, coffee table, ottoman and of course our legs! You're attempting to build vertical stability, and often try to stand holding on with just one hand. This works out fine, unless you get excited to see us or the cats or a toy and let go. Then you topple over and fuss for a half a second before we can scoop you up and shower you with kisses and then it's all better.
We've bean proofed the entire apartment so that you can have the run of the place. We want you to feel confident to explore your environment and take risks, while feeling safe knowing we're nearby. We want you to be able to explore gravity and push and pull. We want you to be able to figure out what happens when you climb INTO something or ONTO something, or occasionally THROUGH something. Even if you get stuck, which you invariably do. Even if you fall, which you invariably do. Because we want you to grow up knowing that you can explore things---and that you can get stuck and make mistakes, and it's okay.
Each month goes by in a blur. Some days feel long. Like when you wake up at night screaming because of a fart, or seven, or because you have the wiggles, or because you had a bad dream—or whatever it is that possesses your little self to wake up at 2 a.m, 2:30 a.m., 3 a.m., 4:30 a.m and so on. Or when, for some reason, during the day, you simply cant wind down enough to nap and you become a ferocious grump, crying whenever we set you down. This makes us exhausted. And often your daddy and I realize that we start pointing fingers at each other when we're like this (so tired our heads feel like they're splitting open). We start arguments and wax very sarcastic. But we're getting better at remembering that we're just tired. And that we love you more than anything in the whole wide world. So we make a lot of coffee on those days. We stop trying to pretend we'll be able to sleep in, and get up. We take long hot showers and go for a walk to the market with you in the Borjn, where we buy flakey raspberry Danishes and pumpkin muffins. And by the time we get back you're usually asleep.
You are a sensitive, thoughtful, goofy little guy. You giggle with delight still when you see the cats, or when we build towers up for you out of blocks and you knock them down. You love your book, That's Not My Lion, and grab the lion's ears, or tail or nose when we ask you where they are. You turn the pages yourself, and then you eat them. You discovered how to put things INTO your toybox this week. And it's amazing to watch you make choices about which toy you want to play with.
It's also amazing to watch you play with your little friend Bella. You smile so wide at her, and reach out to touch her face. And she thinks you're so cool because you can drink from a cup and stand and crawl. And you think she's just dandy and you suck on her socks. Last time you saw her you put your pacifier in her mouth. Her mama and I nearly died with laughter. You also get very jealous when I talk to Bella: you crawl over right away and flash me your most winning smile. If I don't pay attention right away, you start to yelp and get cross. It is incredible to watch your emotions unfold.
And yesterday, when you'd had entirely enough of mama by the end of the day, when you saw your dada come out of his office you reached out your arms to him. Then when he didn't come to you right away you squirmed to be put dow,and then you crawled straight to him, and tugged on his pants. His heart melted all over the floor.
Love, Mama
Studio Friday: Something Found
I've been hoarding stamps since I was eight. But these I found in DH's parent's basement: shoved into shoeboxe---tiny picture menageries belonging to one of their elderly friend's who had died and willed the contents of his house to them. Four boxes in all, many stamps are organized by type in small wax paper envelopes. Some are still attached to postcards or letters. I couldn't believe my luck.
One postcard of South African women standing wrapped in long white, red and yellow cloaks reads, "These are the people very near here. Most interesting country and my virst visit. Working hard but seeing a lot. Love Bill"
Another with a small cellophane package of sharp black lava crumbs from the Mauna Lao Volcano in Hawaii reads, "Now don't burn your fingers ha! ha! Having a grand time and a lovely place to stay here. Wish I had longer but must be off again. Hazel."
Since I first saw the brightly colored ornate stamp on an 'overseas' envelope addressed to my father when I was five, I was stricken with wanderlust and wonder. I could hardly fathom the places that spawned the exquisite tiny drawings of orchids or frogs, or the events that seemed noble enough to emblazon with the lithograph onto those tiny inch-by-one-inch squares.
History reveals itself on these small tokens of currency that send letters fluttering across the globe. Holiday greetings, inventions, political activism, endangered species. Everything, it seems, has been recorded for posterity on a stamp.
Growing up I pressed them under the glossy pages of a photo album, but now I keep them scattered. I use them in my art often when I'm seeking to capture a sense of the exotic or foreign. Or I use whole rows of the same stamp, repeating an image like Warhol in miniature. I know they might be worth something, but I have never been the type to preen over a collection. I keep my books dog-eared. I put flowers in antique vases, and I use these stamps.
(Click on each image to view them larger--they are so gorgeous, I couldn't resist including the full-size images.)
The lives of inanimate things
And I'm starting to think maybe they do, because recently in our house TOYS ARE EVERYWHERE. Strewn about, always underfoot, our floors have become a battlefield or a ballroom for inanimate things:
The small, developmentally appropriate, carefully selected objects: brightly colored wooden blocks. Rattles. Board books. Stuffed animals.
The not so carefully selected objects that work just as well: mixing bowls, a wooden salad spoon, an empty water bottle, a calculator.
And the things he selects himself: our magazines (shredded), The Wall Street Journal (crumpled), my cell phone (is that why it's suddenly beeping like it's posessed???) and anything and everything that can be climbed upon, pulled on, or sucked on.
