Ping Pong Babies and Touching God

Just the other day I came upon a baby bird on the path to the house next door. I almost stepped on it right as I spied it, in fact it is quite amazing I saw it at all. It was a baby junco, with feathers, about the size of a ping pong ball. It had stormed the night before and apparently the bird had fallen out of its nest.  Looking around however I could not see one. I did see two adult birds, parents, chittering in the rhododendron beside the path. So sorry little bird I said as I went on my way down to the little cabin next door.

I came back about thirty minutes later and checked to see if the baby was still there. It was. Not making a noise. Still with feathers. Still the size of a ping pong ball. Going about my business I went into the house Several minutes later I came back out to study the problem.

We have a feeder in the back of our house. Not something that is easy to do with the squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons and even bears that all love bird food. And there are all kinds of birds that frequent the feeder, including juncos. In fact juncos are about the most numerous guests to the box feeder; they entertain us daily as we drink our coffee. So if they are so numerous why worry about one baby bird I thought.

I think it was precisely because they do entertain us that I could not get that ping pong feathered ball of a bird off my mind. Juncos are the first to hop in the feeder in the morning, never waiting until it is actually hung but jumping on board as I swing it out away from the squirrels. They watch us in the bedroom as we let the dogs out and wait patiently for someone to bring out the feeder. They visit all day long.

In addition to birds we have big gray squirrels who manage to jump anywhere I hang the feeder. There is no such thing as out of reach. We have smaller red squirrels who are new to the environs this year who are also miniature acrobats. And we have what I can only think are baby squirrels who seem like they are going to be gray but have a tinge of brown still. I am not sure. But these little squirrels have become our latest entertainment.

I sit on the deck a lot at this time of year. Reading or writing or sometimes just sitting. Last night I was writing as the sky darkened and the thunderstorms rolled in. This morning I am in the kitchen, my usual winter nesting place, because although it is spring it is still raining.  Otherwise I would be out on the deck drinking coffee with the birds. The little squirrels hate that.

These squirrels are new this year. They have found the feeder and have become very territorial. I know this because whenever I am outside they spend an inordinate amount of time barking at me. Yelling I think. Tail twitching, racing up and down the tree next to the deck, and jumping on and off the railing. But unlike the older gray squirrels, they will not jump into the feeder if I am outside. So this has become my new entertainment. Simple pleasures.

We also have new birds this spring.  In April we were inundated with tiny pine siskins. They flocked to the feeders and when there was no available opening they just hovered around the deck waiting for spaces to open up. And they crapped all over the railing, the deck and some of the furniture. For several days I did not put the feeder out as a way to encourage them to move on. It seemed to work. Or maybe I was lucky and it was just time for them to continue their migration.

Just recently a catbird, or several catbirds, have arrived to dine with us. They are pretty birds, with that unusual call that reminds me of my old siamese cat; hence the name. I am not sure how many there are, certainly a lighter colored female and a darker gray male but we only see them one at a time. They are somewhat territorial, so they are trying to work it out with the other bigger birds who have prior claim, specifically the cardinals and the rufous-sided toweys. So far so good. But it is the juncos that are the constant in our backyard, even more than the chickadees, and I feel a certain loyalty to them. So back outside I go.

This time I could see the baby was shaking, cold now that it was on the ground and probably hungry and thirsty. I spoke reassuringly to the parents then came back inside to talk to my husband. "There is a baby junco outside."

"That's too bad" he said, "does it have feathers? There's not much we can do."

"I know, I cannot even see a nest it might have fallen out of, but I cannot just leave it there." My husband closes his reader and looks at me. "What do you want to do?"

"I have an old nest. Maybe we can put him in it and try to put it back in the tree. I have to do something."

The baby was still there when we returned with the nest. I gently scooped it up and it immediately opened its mouth wide hoping to be fed. A parent bird swooped by my head. I plopped it in the nest and handed the whole thing to my husband who put it in a fork of the rhododendron. Being that he is taller than me it was our best hope. Then we went back inside.

A short while later some cousins showed up for a lunch date. The carpark is in front of the house where we had put the nest so as we went out to greet our guests I went over to check on the baby. It was quiet for the first time. No parents chitting or hopping around on the branches. The nest was on the ground upside down. I picked it up. There was no baby.

So maybe we saved the baby. I don't know. It was nowhere to be seen, and even our dogs had no whiff of it when they came out moments later. I am not sure what happened. Maybe the parents were able to move the baby from the nest. Although if that was true why couldn't they have picked it up off the ground? Again I don't know. But I do know that I felt better doing something rather than letting the inevitable happen. And I know a lot of baby birds die every year; in fact it is probably good that a lot of them don't make it. But this year, in this place, perhaps one baby didn't die but made it back to the nest for a second chance.

I will watch the juncos more closely this summer wondering if one of them is little ping pong. Sparing the parent birds their obvious grief lightened my own load that day. But holding that tiny feather-weight baby in my hands for a brief few seconds felt like touching God. It was a transcendent moment. Who knew?

Musings on High School

This year I, along with an old friend, have decided to initiate a high school reunion. Not unusual one might say. People have them all the time. I have gone to two with my husband in the last eight years; the third one I politely declined. But for me there is a feeling that while a high school reunion might be filled with possibilities it also might be fraught with missteps.

Our high school was in New Jersey and the fall of 1964 saw the welcoming of our freshman class which numbered just around three hundred. The school was overcrowded and undergoing an addition. Consequently the freshman went to classes in the afternoons from twelve noon until five pm. Finally, having arrived at high school we were denied access; all the upperclassmen attended in the morning.

The school was fed by two middle schools, called junior highs back then, from two neighboring townships. I had moved to New Jersey the year before and had attended one of the junior highs for my eighth grade year. One year later I found myself with equally as many new people to meet and try to get to know. In retrospect I think we might have gotten closer as a class just because we were alone in the school all those afternoons of that first year.

Our sophomore year the new addition opened and we joined the upperclassmen as well as the incoming freshman. A lot of people to sift through. It was a challenge but also fun as we found ourselves in classes with older boys. And older girls?

I really don't remember much about those first two years; my experience comes more into focus during my junior year when I became an officer of the class, was inducted into the National Honor Society, joined the women's softball team and joined the ranks of the dating. It was during this year that I became aware of leaders in the school and gravitated towards becoming one.

Our class lacked focus and leadership was part of the problem. While there was a class dues structure to raise funds, the school also facilitated fundraising events to accumulate the necessary monies to provide for senior year expenses.

Traditionally, the senior class treasury paid for everyone's yearbook, for their senior prom and for a senior trip. Our class was woefully underfunded halfway through our junior year and it became apparent that we would have to make some tough choices. Being very vocal I got drafted to run for senior class president. Supported by some close friends, we decided to make a run for it, to raise some consciousness and enough dollars to have the kind of senior year every class had had before us.

The system was skewered towards the senior class as most of the fundraising was their prerogative. So while it wasn't as impossible as it seemed we had been lazy in paying our dues, and inspiring people to both pay back dues and work at various fundraising events was a challenge.

And yet it wasn't. We had great fundraising events. A battle of the bands, a dance before school, the traditional Junior-Senior Variety Show, the  refreshment stand at the football games. There are sure to be other events that I am forgetting but those stand out in my mind.

Having completed almost all of my core curriculum, I took two art classes that year. The first period art class became our war council room, and we made posters and banners to spread throughout the school at home football games and every imaginable fundraising opportunity. We became Mighty Great 68 and it was a mighty great year.

We sailed into graduation with money to spare, enough to make a gift to the school, and had a fabulous time spending it. And when that night finally came I felt connected to people in way I never had as an army brat moving, moving all the time. I remember sharing my feelings with a friend as we escaped a graduation party and drove around in his brother's convertible. I was very sad to see high school end. And I was right to be.

It would take me over twenty years to find a group of friends with whom I would forge those kind of connections. And because I was an army brat I walked away from high school without maintaining any of those early friendships. It is now, almost fifty years later, that I realize what an amazing experience high school was for me, what a loss those relationships has been.

High School is the place we come into as children and leave having had our first brush with adulthood. For many of us those years are fraught with pain and not fitting in; for me they became filled with a sense of belonging that I had never experienced before. I was right to be sad that it was over; but it was also right to walk away, to know that I wasn't ready to have those kinds of connections in my life.

I envy those who are ready, and do maintain those feelings of connection. I have several friends who get together with old high school buddies on a regular basis. There is always the danger of being limited by those old friendships, of not being seen for anything other than what you were at eighteen, but there is also the feeling of being known.

When my older brother died five years ago I felt like I was cut loose from my moorings. He was the last person who knew me as a child, and had witnessed me becoming the adult I am today. I still grieve that loss.

And so as I, we, work towards this fall reunion I look forward to seeing people who knew me as a fledgling adult. I look forward to seeing that alien girl/woman again as a part of me. Because those years have informed so much of what I have done with my life and who I am today. At a time when I feel myself to be fully grown, deciding if I have one more grand work left in me, it will be nice to visit with people who shared my first grand work.

The trepidation comes with fear of trying too hard to entertain, to be the center or a group which is no longer, to be something for everyone. The joy will come with being a facilitator for a new group and to stand back and see what happens. No matter what, the stretch will come from being with people who were a witness to my emerging self; and to trust them with who I am today. And to be a witness to their lives. If you are open to it, everything comes full circle.

Eli

Dogs have always been a part of my life from the time I was a child, and although we have two dogs now I have always thought of myself as more of a cat person. It seems that you are one or the other, cat or dog, but being married to Al who is a hunter and has always had dogs, dogs have prevailed in our life together.

As a child we did not really have pets. We had animals that came in and out of our lives mostly as a result of my dad being in the army. We were living in Texas when he brought home a jackrabbit from work one day. I am not sure how it came to be in their possession but since the soldiers were not allowed to have animals often times my father returned from work with some kind of animal that needed a home. That particular rabbit had been found injured and while we tried, it did not survive in captivity,

Another time, when we lived in France, he brought home a large sheepdog. We had no yard to contain it and so soon after he came to live with us the dog escaped.  His name was Blue and we combed the streets for hours looking for him, but because we did not speak the language and could not communicate our need for assistance we had to give up the search as darkness fell. Blue was never seen again.

Later while still in France, after moving into government housing, my father brought home a goose. It was a domesticated goose and was kept in a pen behind the apartment building in which we lived. To this day I have no idea where it came from but find it odd how we small children became attached to it. One day while we were out the neighbors cooked that pet. I was distraught and felt horribly deceived by my father who was complicit in the distraction necessary for the bloody deed to be done. And while my father continued bringing home animals, mostly dogs, wherever we resided I never really attached to any of them again. I was seven years old.

Eventually my mother took to choosing her own dogs and her heart's desire became a series of silver miniature poodles. By this time I was in high school, and while the puppies were cute no one took the time to train them and they were destructive. One after another my mother labelled the untrained dogs as "bad" and gave them away only to replace them a few months later with another tiny version of the previous bad dog. My little sister played with them like dolls and no matter what the name my father called them all Missy, after the first doomed dog. I took to my closed-door room forbidding their presence until I left for nursing school.

In my own marriage we had a series of cats. They were good cats, as cats go, but because of my husband's military career it was difficult to provide a consistent environment. Over the years our housing ranged from apartments, to townhouses, to free standing houses. After a series of moves with our first two cats, who were around for the births of both of our sons, we left them in Texas with a lawyer who had a farm. They had become accustomed to moving freely indoors and out and our housing in Chicago would not accommodate those habits. Shades of my childhood hung over that decision.

Eventually, several years later, we succumbed and got a puppy. My younger son was five, had always been afraid of dogs, but out of the blue one day starting carrying around an imaginary puppy. Paul had a lot of anxiety resulting in many fears, but amazingly found ways to overcome most of them on his own. But the dog fear needed a little help so with the next move, a house with a yard and Paul's involvement, we began the search for the right dog.

My husband wasn't a dog person either so it was purely out of love for our child that we made the leap. Cassie was a Boykin Spaniel puppy, came highly recommended by our family vet, and was the perfect dog. Well almost. She had a digging problem, but also a burying problem. I had been drying clothes outside whenever the climate allowed, and Georgia was where nature and clothes drying collaborate well. However as Cassie grew, into a not very big dog mind you, she developed the habit of pulling clothes off the line and burying them. She was so accomplished that we rarely found the things she buried, up to and including adult sized white shirts. It was the dog or the clothes line and so I left off hanging out clothes. That was almost thirty years ago.

While she was a good size for a house dog what we didn't realize was that Cassie was from a hunting line. She would stay inside with her people in the evening but only sleep outside except in the coldest of weather. So after six years and a move to New York, where once again we would be living in army quarters with no yard, we left Cassie with my sister. The idea was that they would foster her and we would get her back when we moved to a more appropriate place. Two years later we returned to the same post only to realize we could not possibly reclaim our dog from our niece and nephew who has grown to love her as much as we did. I never visited my sister without that dog greeting me happily. It was my first real experience of dog love.

I have had several more dogs since Cassie. Sophie, a black lab who we acquired after I was followed on a run through our neighborhood one evening, and who lived to be sixteen. She stayed with my husband after our divorce just because she was so old. Charlotte, a chocolate lab, who came as a puppy when Sophie was twelve and rejuvenated that old dog to live another four years. Both have gone on to their reward. In my second marriage we have Snook, a nine year old American Water Spaniel who Al brought home while we were dating, and Ginger an English Cocker Spaniel who came as a christmas gift almost seven years ago. They are good dogs.

In our dog family I must include our sons' dogs because they have also been a part of our lives. Abby was my younger son's first dog after he married Anna. She was a spirited Golden Retriever who loved my first grandbaby when she was brought home six years ago. They have had many pets along with and after Abby, but now Finn fills Abby's collar; a foundling Golden he watches dutifully over their four children. I have enjoyed them all but it is Eli who has become a dog of my heart; the dog who finally cracked my resolve to never get attached to another pet.

Eli came to my older son Jay and his wife Millie one Saturday eight years ago. He was an odd mixture but very handsome and full of life. Eli moved with the kind of energy that made me smile from the day I met him until the last day I saw him. He always greeted me enthusiastically. Part beagle, Eli was a talker who would proceed to barking if you encouraged him at all. And my husband Al always encouraged him; me not so much.

Eli was a really good dog, the perfect dog for my son and his wife, but he was an incredible dog when it came to welcoming babies into the family. Five years ago when I stayed with one week old Kira for an hour so her parents could go out for a cup of coffee and feel some sense of normalcy, Eli stayed by my side every minute. Never taking his eyes off me or the baby he moved in tandem with me down the hall or into the kitchen. And that was just the beginning of Eli's call to duty.

For the next year, until Kira was crawling and began pulling on his ears or tail, Eli stayed by her side. He slept under her crib every night until one day, without fanfare, he moved back into the master bedroom where he had slept since he was a pup. When John came home from the hospital two years after Kira he began the vigil all over again. And again when Simon came home seventeen months after John. There wasn't much respite in the intervening months but that didn't matter to Eli. His duty was self-determined and he accepted it without complaint.

I think one of the most interesting things about those years was how little Eli seemed to sleep. If the babies were awake he was awake. If we were holding the babies while they slept he was awake by our side. He only seemed to sleep under their cribs when they were in them. Whenever I came to help he greeted me with his normal enthusiasm and then watched me like a hawk. His protective instincts seemed always on high alert and yet he never appeared threatening to any of us.

By the time I publish this Eli will have gone on to his next life. He has been diagnosed with a cancer so invasive that when the vet saw him last week his life expectancy was only about two weeks. He has probably been sick for a number of months but he has never complained. Declining gradually, it was hard to see that there was anything wrong until the last few weeks. It comes as a shock to all of us, but especially to my son and his wife, who thought they had years to bring a puppy into the home for Eli to train up in the ways of a good dog.

It is so like Eli to leave this way. Always steadfast, always reliably the same, it is hard to imagine a dog that could ever be as good as Eli. He accepted his responsibility quietly and happily. He loved all equally although I always sensed I was special to him. That's just the kind of dog he was, he made everyone feel special. But I think, hope, another dog will come into their life; one who will not be so responsible perhaps but who will teach the children about responsibility and help them remember Eli.

Go in peace Eli, wherever you are I hope you are barking up a storm and playing with old friends. And getting lots of good dog sleep, You have earned it little buddy.

Writing in Relationship

Life sometimes surprises me. No that is not true, life is always surprising, it is me that is only sometimes aware of that fact. And when I am aware these days it mostly makes me laugh. And sometimes cry.

I don't really aspire to be a writer. I more desire to be conscious and aware, so when I am once again caught off guard by life it makes me realize how much I live without really thinking, something I so readily accuse others of doing. It is writing that helps me live more thoughtfully.

For a period of years, ten perhaps, beginning in my late thirties, I kept a journal and wrote almost daily. That practice grew out of keeping a sketchbook while getting my art degree and entering therapy when my mother died, but dwindled over time as I became busier living than observing. At least that is what I thought. And my journals were, are, private; I still have them, dusty and stacked on the highest shelf in a bookcase. I haven't read them in years but I think there is much that is repetitive inside the covers of those unlined books, and probably much that is not worth reading let alone remembering. But this morning I am wondering if they bear rereading, like history that could, if observed, not be repeated.

It is that time of night, morning, that is so early I cannot have coffee. Three o'clock is the time when I have had enough sleep to not be tired but not enough to carry me through the following day. It is the time I used to get up and paint when I was in my painting years, which parenthetically coincided with my journaling years; as often as I would paint at that time of day/night I would write.

I did not only write/paint in the wee small hours of the morning (okay I stole that but isn't it lovely?) in fact that was the exception more than the rule. It was just the time when things felt most urgent. Is that what I am feeling now as I write, a sense of urgency?

I will turn sixty-four soon, in a few weeks actually. Sixty-four is the year of the great Beatles song, whose music defined my coming of age and the beginning of consciousness. Sixty-four is also the age my mother was when she died unexpectedly. Both of those thoughts have occurred to me as I come into this birthday. And yes there is a sense of life speeding up, of things becoming more pressing, of a need to become more thoughtful once again. All of which describe a sense of urgency.

My husband is looking forward to his fifty-fifth high school reunion this coming month. I have another friend who just returned from her same fifty-fifth gathering. I have no such desire to attend a reunion but I can understand the pull. High school, particularly the end of high school and particularly if one had a good experience of high school, is a time when all things are possible. Everything is pregnant with possibility. We are coming into adulthood fresh faced without the scars of age. We have not yet made bad choices or mistakes that will define us. It is a time of Camelot.

Sixty-four, or seventy-three as my husband will be on his next, soon, birthday, is a time when one begins to wonder what is still possible. When choices may have hardened into patterns and lifestyles that we never saw coming. Or for some of us, when looking back, we realize how life is full of wonderful surprises that also never saw coming. And for most of us it is some combination of the two; there are some regrets that cannot be undone but there are people and experiences in our life that have, and continue to, enriched it beyond anything we could have imagined at seventeen or eighteen. And everything that happened between the two can fill volumes.

That is why I write. At first because I wanted to live a conscious life, something that came out of my painting and my therapy, and now because I want to share that process and the result of that desire with others. Not many mind you, mostly close friends and children and hopefully someday grandchildren too, but some. Anyone really who finds their way to my table and wants to share the fare.

My older son and his wife spend an hour every morning sitting and being, reading, writing (for he too journals), and now they have two of their three children join them for that quiet time. It is a lovely way to start the day and a way for a family to be together in their separateness. It is a practice I find enviable and surprising but mostly nourishing. Nourishing for the individuals but also for the group who are together in a way they will not be ten or twenty years from now. It is a practice in mindfulness.

My mindfulness is more haphazard and random. It comes at odd hours and odd days, when I am just waking from a sound sleep or when I am engaged in solitary work which I do so often as an artist. When I am walking or when I am gardening also. It comes more often these days and like my son, (and Winnie-the-Poo), mindfulness will bring me to my thoughtful place which is sometimes to my laptop and this blogspot. It is a practice that seems essential for these chaotic times and these diminishing years when some things are beginning to seem impossible.

And because there is that feeling dwelling around the edges of everything I do these days, the wondering if this is the last time I will have an experience of travel or renovating a house, two things that I dearly love, I want to be conscious in the process of deciding what I will give up and what I will fight to continue doing. I do not want any thing or any person I love to slip away without the awareness that I am letting it or them go. In the busyness of life it is easy to do that, and while they will find others to fill whatever void I leave I may just be left with an emptiness of my own making, becoming the product of my own laziness. The opposite of mindfulness.

So yes, life continues to surprise me, and I am fortunate that those surprises are delightful and fill my being with joy for the most part. And the answer to the question "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?" is a resounding yes. Nourishing my soul is my job and my responsibility, writing in relationship is but one tool to accomplish it.

"Amen, sister", as my friend Rosie would say.

In the Mountains

In the mountains
Lungs inspire mo' better air
Toes weave with foldover grasses
Eyes drink morning light
Light changes

In the mountains
Light changes throughout the seasons
Throughout the day if allowed
Daytime sounds arrive from town
on the backs of ridges then recede
Night changes everything

In the mountains
Night changes everything
beckoning spirits of all ages.
Light fires with
modern day torches.
Watch sparks fly returning
mingling with the stars of always.
Urging remembrance
letting time fall away. Sit still.

In the mountains

Parent, Child, Parent

I don't remember exactly when I was orphaned. I know we are all orphaned at some point; recently for some of my friends it has been in the seventh decade of life. The first inkling for me came when I was three or four, standing in front of a picture window in an empty living room wishing someone would come home and take care of me. The second time was the summer I was thirteen, this time sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor crying as I listen to my mother call me a whore. In front of my aunt and uncle while my father stands silently by.

Thirteen year old girls are not easy but mothers of those not quite women can be brutal. The year preceding that summer, my eighth grade year, was especially difficult for both my mother and me. She was turning forty and finding herself back in the work force as a way to steady the income my father had always played fast and loose with. At the same time I stubbornly drew a line and refused to wear the little girl clothes she preferred to buy; twin versions my younger sister, by eight years, was also wearing. I drew the line and she left me out there in no man's land; none of the new income would flow my way for clothing or much else for that matter.

So I began babysitting to earn my own wardrobe, and the sewing I had played at since I was nine was put to use copying skirts other girls bought at the new mall in town. With a new sense of freedom those earnings gave me I took advantage of my mother's absence to range farther afield after school, and along with other girls my age developed an interest in boys. Playing basketball, baseball, meeting at the bowling alley and the occasional movie were new ways to pass the time when not in school. In the summer those activities were augmented by trips to the beach on the army bus provided expressly for that purpose. That bus became a source of independence and we used it to hang out; many fun filled hours were enjoyed as we rode back and forth to the army recreation center. Still in all I was not a bad child.

This particular Saturday I was playing baseball with a group of kids at a field near our house; it was mid morning and we had managed to corral a not too large group and field two teams. It was noteworthy because if there were enough boys the girls would be relegated to the sidelines to watch rather than join in the game. It was 1964 and women's lib was but a phrase in Life magazine; it had no place on the playgrounds of my youth. My Aunt Bobby and Uncle Andy were visiting from Illinois and while in years past I rarely left their side, things had changed over the winter and my uncle had embarrassed me by singing "Peggy Sue" the previous night at a little league game. So I escaped the house bright and early that day.

The game was just getting under way when my parents drove by with my aunt and uncle in tow; my father stopped the car and my mother ordered me home. I was not sure what I had done or why my brother was allowed to stay but I left and, embarrassed once again, returned home. It would be several hours before they came back but before I could say a word my mother tore into me; me and my "little whore friends" and our forays into the nearby woods was the subject of her diatribe. I fiercely defended myself and although in retrospect I know it sounded like sass I didn't care at that point. Horribly embarrassed the damage was done; never again would I derive any pleasure from those family visits. Never again would I feel the same need to please my mother.

As I sat there on that floor, where I am sure I landed partly out of my own drama, all I could think about was how I did not need these people; how I did not need anyone. I knew I was nothing like the people who were raising me and indeed would never, ever, aspire to be anything like them. And while I understood that I could not leave, there was no escaping the hold they had on me, I also knew in that instant that the only way out was education. And that I could, and indeed would, work four more years to get the grades I needed to go to college.

I am not sure how exact those thoughts were in my head at that moment, but the gestalt understanding of what it would take to survive the family, the parents, I had been born to was completely formed at that time. I was orphaned again in the kitchen of that house and it was my own doing.

Almost twenty-five years later when my mother died, followed shortly by my father, I was orphaned for the last time. I had become educated, married well and had two beautiful sons, but the desire to be someone's child never left me. I went away to school but came back time and again seeking a mother and a father. They were not there; not the way I needed them. The visits were short lived but always I came back trying to be the good daughter, giving them the opportunity to be the good parents.

I am not sure we ever stop needing to be someone's child. At some point, in order to achieve some real kind of maturity, we have to become the parent to our own little orphan. Luck was on my side the winter my mother died; it was the right time and place to learn to love the abused little girl I carried inside. It was not easy and it did not happen overnight but I know now that my parents were just orphans themselves, suffering from their own brokenness, and that they had neither the energy nor the skills to heal themselves.  They just passed that wounding on to their children. But what I also know is that the greatest gift they gave me was dying young. I do not grieve for those lost years.

The Christmas before my mother died in February we were once again standing in her kitchen and she was telling me about the chest pain from which she was suffering. She knew she needed a cardiac cath but she could not leave my father long enough, trust him enough, to go and have the procedure that would have saved her life. She died two months later of a massive heart attack. My father was drunk when I arrived for the funeral and except for the actual day she was buried he remained drunk until the day he died eighteen months later. It was his drunkenness that forced me to face my demons and enabled me to become the parent to my own child.

It was not easy and I am not sure it is ever finished, this work of raising yourself, but it becomes easier over time and the results are incredibly rewarding. However what I have come to understand is that while being a parent to my own child had to be learned, trying to parent my parents was a job I had assumed early without thought or preparation. So now, even as I find myself healed from those early parental wounds, I realize I am drawn to parent other orphan children. The mother in me cannot stop. And it is not the loving mother but the disapproving mother that often takes over. Because while I am compelled by the orphans staring out of the eyes of friends and lovers I am also frustrated and irritated with them for not being their own good parents.

Forgiveness is the underlying desire of this place I find myself. Forgiving my parents, forgiving myself, forgiving my friends and siblings and lovers. But also seeking the forgiveness of my children for being the imperfect parent I was and am. Because while I have come to understand that all parents are flawed it has been especially difficult for me to accept my own imperfections. I do think my sons and their wives are light years ahead of where I was at their ages, and certainly where my parents were at any age; they understand forgiveness in a way I have only just begun to appreciate. And I, their mother, find myself the beneficiary of that wisdom. Children and parents...the circle of life. Easy to embrace, challenging to hold.

Artist-in-Waiting?

It's too early for coffee; perhaps I will go back to sleep I think as I write. Perhaps.

I have been immersed in a renovation project, actually two projects, this year. I have not taken time to write or make art but I have worked steadily keeping my head down and until the last few days slept well. As this second project comes to a close I find myself unable to sleep. Or not able to sleep for long periods; the full nights sleep that has been a trademark of the last ten years eludes me.

My friend Rosie has come to visit for the month of August. She is renting the other little house just down the hill that we own here in the mountains. She came with hope and desire; a desire to spend time writing by herself and writing with me. I have not written since last December, and I was not sure that I would again until Rosie came.

In years past whenever I was having trouble sleeping it often felt as if God was calling me. I am so busy during the daylight hours I don't seem to hear that call and so it is the middle of the night that I get awakened with an image or a thought, or more than a thought; an essay. That is what happened tonight.

Rosie is retired from a life of dedicated work. She was a nurse, a teacher, a visionary in the medical community and finished her career as CEO of a retirement community. Rosie saw the need, found the resources and initiated the project in our hometown. It is a model program. Now she has retired, with a pension and her savings and moved back to Virginia. That  is why she is visiting for a month and not just a week or a weekend.

I am not retired. True I am sixty-three years old and have had various jobs from which I might have retired if I had dedicated my life to any one, or even two of them. What I do now, over the last ten or twelve years is just an extension of that job life, but not really a job. I am not sure what to call it or what it is.

Upon graduating from school in the early seventies I took and passed my boards to become a registered nurse. I dedicated myself to that work, first in the army then in teaching hospitals until I had my first child. Then I became a stay-at-home mom. Another child and four years later I became possessed of the itch to go back to school. Always a mom, a cub scout den mother, a PTA worker and elementary school art mother I began taking classes, succeeding in getting my BFA in studio art. Six years had elapsed. I still had no career but I was hired as an art teacher in the very school I had just volunteered hundreds of hours. An award of sorts.

Married, at the time, to an army officer there was no doubt that he had a career. A graduate of West Point and Rutger's Law School his work defined career in our family. Many of my shifts in jobs, and school, were precipitated by his reassignments. So just as I caught my breath and began to have a feel for teaching we moved to New York; where a BFA did not qualify me to teach art. After getting my children settled in a new home and a new school, and a couple of months of pondering my existence, I went back into nursing; a field I had left thirteen years earlier.

It was overwhelming at first but as I got back in the rhythm I remembered why I loved this work. More jobs would follow, some in nursing, some in the arts. At the same time I became truly immersed in painting, something I had not felt particularly called to when getting my degree. It was invigorating and inspiring to be me, a healer of sorts, a teacher and community activist. I felt at the top of my game.

At that point I decided to turn the non-profit I had conceived and given birth to over a period of ten years to a new director and retired to my home and studio to make serious art. Only it did not come. Sure we bought a new house and I, being enamored of the Bloomsbury Group, painted every room. Applying faux finishes and decorative murals throughout, the work was beyond invigorating. But my studio work lanquished.

I made my first mosaic in that house after a trip to Italy with women friends. Many more mosaics would follow. In the hope of saving my marriage there was a move to another house, this time with major renovations and redesign projects. The budget dictated saving the old kitchen cabinets so I designed the space around them, painting every surface; beautiful painting some of it. New rooms were added with skylights and large windows overlooking a wide deck and garden-in-waiting. I did finish the house but I could not save my marriage or finish that garden.

I bought a condo and invigorated by the previous project began another renovation. This time I did more of the work myself, ripping out carpet and scraping the cement slab until it was returned to a near virgin state, I stained and sealed it. I applied mosaics in the kitchen and bathroom. I hired painters for the walls. It was a little gem and when it sold two years later there was a nice profit to show for my labor.

Remarrying, this time to a judge albeit another lawyer, I moved into his newly re-imagined, renovated early twentieth century home. I kept my studio in a rundown warehouse of a building nearby and got busy with the business of marriage, again. A month later a tree fell on the old garage and we began the process of building it back, this time inspired by the idea of an arts and crafts era "gar-low", combination garage bungalow.

I drew up the plans and my husband and I, acting as our own contractors, began the paperwork necessary to rebuild in a historic district. The little shed garage grew into a six hundred square foot building with a studio above that now serves as our media center and overflow guest space. It was almost two years in the making, as well as another few months of landscaping and hardscaping, but finally we were done in the spring of 2008. The next summer we bought a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina.

That is where I sit now as I write this. Well not exactly in that cabin but in the slightly larger, newly renovated, bungalow up the hill. After completing the remaking of the little cabin three years ago we began feeling the urge to have something just slightly larger. With more bedrooms for little visitors. And a flat driveway. So here I sit.

It is a quarter to five in the morning and we are getting ready to host a family reunion in two weeks at the new house. Last week the painters finished the exterior while the masons completed the front entrance; today the contractor comes back to install the mantle on the new fireplace. Since April we have torn out windows and doors, moved and added walls, opened old doorways and restored rooms to their former function. I have painted, and re-painted, kitchen cabinets and walls, stained paneling and helped refinish floors. Imagining, and re-imagining, the front entrance I moved brick and stone trying to maintain the original concept while improving the function. Only then did we call the masons. Much of the work has been about function although aesthetic concerns were never secondary to the process.

Sitting here in the master bedroom there is the feeling of a nest. Unintentional but after all we are in the trees. Not much was changed in this room; new french doors that actually open to the deck and painted walls come to mind. There is a new seagrass rug on the floor under the bed and a new quilt on top of it. It is the most recent in a series of quilts I began making when our first grandchild was born seven years ago. Fabricated over the past winter while we were waiting to get started on this newest project, it is the first one made for myself, and I love being in this bed.

So what next is the question everyone has begun asking. Are you doing any art is the other. I always make excuses when that query comes along; new marriage, ten grandchildren in seven years, new houses. But now as I look back I see all I have been doing is my art. For the last fifteen years, since leaving the employ of the Art Factory and striking out on my own.

Everything I have done, every house constructed or renovated has been a work of art. In addition to conceiving the space and drawing the plans I have created mosaics and floorcloths and quilts to fill the homes. Some I have left behind. Some I have carried with me. Some are yet to be made. But the conception, the inspiration and the energy are all there, waiting.

So yes I am a working productive artist and no, I am not retired. Hopefully I never will be. But this time I have plans to finish the garden; after I paint the bathrooms.