Hearts galore.....

Valentine's Day today. I am up, showered, packed and (almost) on my way to visit my son, his wife and children when the phone ring. Addie, the oldest of three, has been throwing up all night; do I still want to come, my son asks.

Addie is my second oldest grandchild out of six.  I have come to realize that every time I visit one of my grandchildren there is a better than even chance that one of them will have a virus and an even better chance that I will get it. I suggest we wait a day and revisit the visit tomorrow. No problem from the other end but what do I do now with a totally unplanned day?

Yesterday, our first really nice day since this horrendous winter began, I decided to clean out the garage.  Part of the impetus was a chaise that belongs to my other daughter-in-law and which has taken up residence in our garage since I brought it back from Atlanta a few weeks ago.  Somehow once it squatted it seemed to attract detritus from our house; books, shoes, clothes, whatever. However Saturday, the day before yesterday, my son brought the fabric for the new slipcover so it is now ready to be sent to its next appointment.  Mind you this chaise used to belong to Millie's grandmother so it has made the rounds and, while it has patiently waited in our garage, I am certainly ready for it to depart. The aforementioned clean-up was in anticipation of its departure, that's how ready I am for it to be gone.

So I had loaded the chaise and the fabric in my husband's car with the hope that while I was gone he would deliver it to the friend that was going to make the slipcover. First order of business on this gift of a day is to take it to my friend Linda. 

Upon returning home I gather another load from the garage clean-up and head to the Salvation Army; on the way back I stop by the bank to deposit a check from a job I completed two days ago. Now I can pay my credit card bill.

I pick up my husband with our dogs and we drop Snook, our American Water Spaniel, at the groomers for a trim. More than a trim really; she is looking like Rowlf the Dog, one of the muppets lest you've forgotten. Next we head downtown to the used bookstore, whereupon we trade in three bags of books, more of the garage clean-up, for credit, and buy only four books in exchange. Now we head to lunch with our other dog, Ginger, an English Cocker Spaniel, who we cannot leave at home because she will howl out of pure loneliness. 

It is February fourteenth mind you, Valentine's Day, and the forecast here in Augusta is for a very warm seventy degrees. We go to a cafe in North Augusta and sit on the patio with Ginger at our feet.  Afterwards we walk beside the Savannah River. It doesn't get much better than this I tell my husband. However I am wrong, it does get better.

Our friend Tom calls and invites us to dinner. He is splurging on lobster and we agree to pick-up bread from the restaurant where we had lunch and stop on the way home to procure dessert.  Come at seven he says, so when we arrive home sometime around three I feel really decadent; four hours with nothing to do. A nap my husband proposes. 

I consider the offer then head out to the garage and work on the framing project that has been on back order. Yesterday I cut the wood as part of the great garage clean-up, so today I sand and paint it.  Another project in waiting complete.

Still time for a nap but wait, the bird baths are full of mud and yuck and there are a ton of robins out there trying to drink out of them. And so my day goes; the bird baths get cleaned, a pot gets moved and repotted, the patio gets swept and rejiggered, and finally, finally I come inside and collapse into a hot bath.  What a day; a day the better part of which was supposed to be spent driving to Montgomery.

So we go to our friends and have a marvelous dinner, and talk and plan a trip to South Dakota this fall. I cannot seem to plan tomorrow but somehow the idea of a cross country trip to South Dakota seems so doable that I don't even laugh at the idea. Not today, a day when all things seem possible.

What a day. Unexpected, unplanned, unpossible, ( impossible?) when I think about it.

The Joy Cafe

In recent years the symbolic meanings overlying the human body have occupied my thoughts.  The heart has become central to my process as first parents, then siblings, and now friends have suffered from the effects of the diseased heart.  The search for the healthy heart feels the present day equivalent of the mythical quest for the Holy Grail. 

The heart in me has the need to find solace in ritual and ceremony as a path to balance the mechanistic approach of modern medicine. While exploring the human figure in my art, I came to recognize the ritual surrounding the drinking and sharing of coffee each day. Cradling a cup in my hands, sharing my innermost thoughts and desires with a friend, I recognized the container as a symbol of the "open" human heart. A "Holy Grail." The desire to honor the process within translates to the elevation of the simple coffee cup to a ceremonial object, recognizing the ritual inherent in drinking coffee, whether alone or in community.

And so it continues....