Coptic Stitch Journals

These days I have to think in terms of projects. While I work on one the others wait, patiently or otherwise. I finish things, but usually not within the time frame I had imagined. Some days this is frustrating, but other days I can totally bask in the warmth of knowing that I do finish things, contrary to how I saw myself when I was much younger, and not only that but I like the things I eventually put out into the world. Most days that is really a whole lot of warmth, and it is helping me to get more comfortable with the backlog of Things Waiting.

One recent project is this group of hand bound journals/sketchbooks/blank books. Pink is not a color I turn to very often, but back in February I was recovering from influenza and bronchitis, thinking about how nice spring would feel, and probably feeling the influence of Valentine's Day everywhere I turned. I wanted pink--glowing, tender, robust, healthy, promising pink in deep-breathing, loving shades. I also wanted to play with watercolors and so, slowly, these journals were born.

Somewhere towards the end of finishing one of these journals, I had the impression that I was creating a small world. And hopefully someone else will take this simple small world into their hands and feel the call to create their own world or worlds within it. That is my hope for these little blank books. I think our souls ache to create and birth and converse as much now as ever in our history.

This, too, is an encouragement when I start to get overwhelmed by all the Things Waiting. They will be finished because they are needed.

These three are available in my Etsy shop, Bark Bread Designs:

These two are available locally at an antique store, along with some other items I have made. (If you are interested in these, please message me.)

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Pasta with Squid Ink Sauce

Hours after moving our son into his dorm room at an arts boarding school a year and half ago, my husband and I sat down to one of the most delicious and memorable meals of my life. I was heartbroken and terrified--our boy was young and it felt way too early to have him away, despite the fact that he had initiated it and that after much soul-searching we were all convinced it was the right move for him. The dinner fixed nothing, but the sheer warm magnificence of it was something of a balm, the way light glitters off broken glass and reminds you that despite the shattering there is still beauty to witness. We ate wonderful things, including a pasta in squid ink sauce, which, despite a warning from our waitress, I ate without tucking a napkin into my shirt. I admit it, I fully believed I had learned to eat without dribbling. And I not only dribbled, I dropped a big piece of pasta right down the front of my shirt, and the black stain is never going to go away. I could not throw the shirt away, and I could not look at it for a long time, either, so I tucked it deep in my closet with all the other things I do not know how to deal with. Something in me remembers at times like this that I am a slow-simmerer. Finally the thought struck me that I could cover the stain even though I could not remove it, and I found tucked nearby one of the lovely vintage handkerchiefs I brought home from my grandmother's house after she died. And I sewed the two heartbreaks together, and it took a very long time, longer than I thought it should have, but look I have made a new beautiful thing and someday I will wear the people I love who I can no longer have close by. 

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Rock & Sling Guest Post: Summer Reading

I am honored to have a piece up on the Rock & Sling blog this past week. It was the wrap-up of their Summer Reading series and a chance to revisit how life and books intertwined at some key summer moments, past and present.

And now that I'm thinking of summer, here's a small bit from a trip to my hometown in June:

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Of Burgers and Barrooms Anthology, Main Street Rag

I am so pleased to have my poem, "This is exactly" included in Main Street Rag's upcoming anthology, Of Burgers and Barrooms. I had the opportunity to peek through the proof, and it looks like a fascinating and varied collection. The projected release date for this collection of stories and poems is November 14, 2017, but you can preorder the book in advance for a discounted price of $10 here. 

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Long Live

The checkout line at the grocery store was long. The list of things-unsolvable banging around in my head was long. My face, a little on the long side anyway, was maybe a bit longer than usual.

The gentleman in front of me, as he finished gathering his bags, leaned in to the clerk and said with a nod towards me, "I'll reward her with a joke since she's been waiting so long." Or something like that. And he turned to me with a smile. "What animal has more lives than a cat?"

I could not even pretend to have a clue. "Frogs. They croak every night." He grinned. The college student behind me was clearly amused, and the cashier, too. We all smiled, exchanged looks and smiled some more. I cannot remember if I thanked him, but I hope I did. I can at least pass the moment along. Because long live kindness and generosity. Long live laughter and compassion, and what Youngest recently referred to as softness, as in soft-heartedness. Long live taking the high road. Long live truth and honesty. Long live seeing the good in the mess, or at least seeing what it could be.

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Found, Day 15

This today was gold: a TED Radio Hour broadcast on Making Mistakes. It's an older show, from almost 2 years ago, but it was new to me, and worth sharing.

"Every mistake is an opportunity in jazz." (Jazz composer Stefon Harris) I love his musical illustration of this. 

There's so much in here. I don't want to write about it right now, I want to internalize it all, let it simmer, pray that it will seep back out in ways I can't predict.

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Easter Best

I thought several times Sunday about getting a family photo. Or at least a picture of the kids in their nice Easter clothes. But it was an incredibly busy day, and at some point I just made the decision that we would all be happier if I let the day move on without it.

I am not that crazy about family photos in the first place. Yes, they are absolutely great for marking time. Yes, I may someday regret the fact that I didn’t insist on more of them. But their penchant for looking unnatural, or the kids’ penchant for making faces, or my penchant for getting incredibly grumpy trying to get the deed done—those things get in the way. And it strikes me that the more I try to get everybody to pose, the less of a story gets through.

But then I got on Facebook today and saw so many lovely pictures, so many friends and their loved ones smiling. I wholeheartedly clicked “like” on picture after picture while at the same time thinking to myself, “You missed the boat again. You are such a dork.” I’m good at that, missing the boat and engaging in negative self-talk.

But here. There is a story I want to tell, and as great and busy and also not-without-squabbles Easter itself was, it comes from the day before:

Saturday after dinner we colored eggs. And the windows were open, and the light was starting to dim. We used eggs bought from a friend, a dozen and a half in many shades of brown. Seven colors, rich and vinegary, the water heated extra-hot in the microwave, gathered in glasses and mugs at the center of the dining room table. Between the dimming light and the brown eggs it was hard to predict colors, but egg after egg rose out of the water a deep jewel-tone. We were in awe, focused on color. Uncertain of outcome but certain of our work.

There are so many things I hope I will not forget from these years: staring at my children in awe of their beauty, holding hands, talking, laughing, I love you. Noticing the fall of eyelashes on soft young cheeks.

And this, too. Coloring eggs and deciding that these are absolutely the best ever. 

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From the Heart

In honor of  Valentine's Day this year, I wore a pair of silver heart earrings. I have had them for a very long time. When I was in sixth grade, the boy I liked came up to me after school and gave them to me, along with a single yellow daffodil. I don’t remember what I said to him, only that I stuffed the flower in my backpack before I got on the bus. Because what if someone saw? I had never seen a kid carrying a flower on a school bus. And I might not have known the word for it, but carrying a flower on a school bus seemed like a very ostentatious thing to do.

What strikes me now is that the boy had guts. Especially since my response was less-than-gutsy. I loved the gift but it also made me shake all over, and the idea of having to explain the flower—Where’d you get that? Who gave it to you? Is he your boyfriend?—was completely over the top. But the boy—he was courageous.

I learned from Brené Brown that the word courage comes from the Latin word for heart, cor. Like love, courage is from the heart. And I think the two need each other. They seem to be always entwined. Love (and I mean all kinds, all forms,) risks ridicule and rejection and pain and misunderstanding and mistakes and entanglements and messiness. It forces uncomfortable things like realness and honesty and transparency. It is this totally gorgeous and warm and scary thing. It requires courage. And in the end, I suspect that love is also what creates courage.

So I wore the earrings to honor a sixth grade boy and the person I hope he became. But also because I would like to throw out all my cynicism about Valentine’s Day. Because love is way bigger and more complicated and harder and better than I ever imagined. Isn't that why we spend so many years giving valentines to every kid in the class?

To honor the day this year I wore not only the silver heart earrings, but also the bright flower necklace Husband gave me one Christmas because he saw me fall in love with the colors, and the gifts Youngest showered me with during the 2^nd grade class party: a paper bracelet, a giant plastic cupcake ring, a puffy green heart-shaped sticker that said Hugs. I wore them all for love and courage and everything else from the heart. 

May my understanding of them increase every year.

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A List for the Middle of the Night

“Mommy, give me something to think about,” she often asks when I tuck her back in to bed in the middle of the night. Bad dreams have this way of haunting. They need to be crowded out with other thoughts.

You are swimming in a pool filled with chocolate—sweet, smooth, thick.

You are walking through a field of flowers, never-ending. Every flower is a different color. Every flower is a jewel, cut paper-thin and glowing in the sun.

You are a mountain climber who cannot fall. You can climb anything, anywhere, as easily as walking up the stairs.

You have the power to shrink or grow to any size. What will you do? Where will you go?

You have the opportunity to spend one day being somebody else—thinking their thoughts, feeling their feelings, doing what they do.

You find a magical pair of shoes. They will take you anywhere in the universe.

You live in Upside-Down World.

Your pet mouse is a fairy in disguise.

Your pet mouse is a spy in disguise.

You own an invisible car. Only you can drive it.

You get to spend one night in the biggest candy store in the world.

Instead of walking you have to fly.

Your best friend is a flying horse.

You are the most famous dancer in the world.

You are the most famous whistler in the world. Your whistling, in fact, has magical powers.

The whole world voted and made you queen for one year. What will that be like?

You are a star, watching the world from above. What does that feel like? What do you see? What do you know that nobody else knows?

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Thankful, 11/27/13: Always a Story—

Which means that everything contains some element of mystery. Always something to learn, always something to understand, and always a kind of freedom in knowing that it might not all be known. I see richness in that, and beauty.

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Bowlfuls of Light

It was during the Hard Time. She bought herself a pair of earrings, and to an outsider maybe that seemed like a simple act, but to her it was a symbol of who she wanted to be. She bought them because they were beautiful, but also because of their shape: bowl-like—open, fillable, generous. They were small but also bright, capturers and reflectors of light. Circles, and therefore whole, but imperfect—like all things that have life.

For a long time she wore them almost exclusively. She wore them and fought to embody those things. She fought to stay open most of all, and when she could not stay open she fought to see light, and to cup it in her hands, and reflect it outward.

The time came when she tired. Her resolve was still there, but something inside of her went underground. Had to. She did not wear the earrings every day, partly because she was tired of fighting. Partly because she wanted to be more than the fight. At night, in bed, she wished to die. She knew she couldn’t because of the small ones who needed her, but she could not stop from wishing it. During the day she paid careful attention to where the light came from, and moved toward it whenever and however she could.

And then a week of vacation, at a summer camp with her family. She resolved to sing and play and pray and love, but her outsides felt brittle and cold. The rawness inside threatened either to break through the shell and overwhelm everything within ten feet of her or else to shrink down to a cold, hard pellet. Either possibility was destruction.

So what do you do when you are rawness rattling inside a brittle shell, to occupy yourself during Free Time every day when the kids are happily occupied?

She found her way to the Arts and Crafts building. She would make something. It is some kind of wordless prayer, making something and hiding yourself in the process—in form, in color, in watching your fingers shape something new. 

Just being in that place felt safe. Supplies, and music, and people working. On one wall hung examples of possible projects: picture frames, bracelets, a paper-mache bowl. It was the bowl that caught her eye—colorful, translucent. Nobody had instructions for making it, but there was a coffee can full of bright squares of tissue paper, and newspaper and Mod Podge, and an old aluminum bowl to use as a mold. So she experimented. Each day she worked on it, layering newspaper, then tissue paper. Color upon color, layer upon layer. Sticky fingers. Quiet heart and mind. The bowl solved nothing, but there was healing in making it. Something about the color and the transparency of the paper spoke to her about warmth and light. How good to hold that in your hands, to watch them work steadily in such a medium.

This habit of looking for light—it is powerful, habit-forming. And when you are in the dark and trying to find your way out, even the smallest glint will pull you forward. So glint-by-glint you move, gathering as you go, and one day you realize you have bowlfuls.

To an outsider maybe it seemed like a simple bowl, made at camp. To her it was more. She set it on the mantel when they got home, just to set it down. All around it life shifted, the light increased. Miracles ensued. She did not move the bowl.

It is still there on the mantel, a bowlful of light. She cannot imagine it anywhere else. 

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Yours To Do With As You Wish

I bought her a diary at the book fair. It has a jeweled lock, and came with two perfect tiny golden keys. And it’s for writing your dreams. She adores it.

So I can understand why a well-meaning adult would look at it and say, “What did you do to your new diary?” I almost asked the same thing.

“I made the moon blue.”

I don’t know how much she’s heard about blue moons. She’s perceptive, and well-read, and pays attention to all sorts of things you don’t think she’s paying attention to. But clearly blue moons are special.

*     *     *

I loved the idea of a diary, myself. I loved the small book, the perfect tiny golden lock and key, the lined pages waiting to be filled.

I just hated filling it. I could last two or three days, maybe. Over many years I collected journals and notebooks, “All About Me” books that came as gifts, scrapbooks. Ruined them by writing on one or two pages. Abandoned them all.

The one exception was a vinyl-covered notebook, pastel pages climbing with flowers, that I filled with poetry in fifth grade. Filled. But that one never counted.

It turns out I have no patience for trying to recount my day. I do not want to provide a timeline, or a blow-by-blow, I do not want to provide captions. I have never been able to keep up with photo albums or scrapbooks or memory boxes or anything else. The things I want to keep or remember are stuffed in boxes or drawers or stacked in piles in closets I hope you won’t ever get a chance to open. I felt guilty about it for a long time.

Then, maybe because I still wanted to be somebody who kept a journal, I read A Book of One’s Own: People and Their Diaries, by Thomas Mallon. I drank this book. It was full of people and life and writing, and that, maybe, is even better than a tiny golden lock and key. The best part was that it introduced me to the idea of a commonplace book. Like a scrapbook, a commonplace book is a collection of the kind of thing I’ve always written down on scraps of paper, the things I carried in the back of my planner, or left sitting on my desk or dresser: quotes, ideas, notes and letters, lists, books I want to read. That could be my journal. That was my journal, unformed and ungathered. All I needed was that definition, and suddenly—freedom—a whole world unlocked.

*     *     *

During graduate school I worked in a small shop that sold handpainted Italian ceramics—dinnerware and serving bowls and dishes. It was an upscale shop, and I was amused by the people who would come in—people who knew how to do things right—who expressed concern over how they could use the dishes they were thinking of buying.

“Now this bowl—which one is this?”

“That’s the salad bowl. The larger one is the pasta bowl.”

“But what if I want to serve pasta in this smaller one?”

“Well, you can do that. It’s your bowl—use it however you like.”

I was aware of a certain freedom I had, not knowing or caring what size bowl I used to serve food in. I still wonder if, after buying both a salad bowl and a pasta bowl, the people who asked ever felt the freedom to use the bowls the way they saw fit: a gnocci with pesto side dish in the salad bowl, maybe, or a colorful pile of fresh fruit in the pasta bowl.

I wonder about all the things that didn’t count because they didn’t fit the definition. I wonder about all the treasures I looked right at but never saw. 

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If You Love Me Tell Me a Story

I have been told throughout my life both that I am very good at hiding my feelings and that I am miserable at hiding my feelings. I haven’t figured out which of these statements is true, although I suspect both are. Most likely what happens is that when I would most like to hide my feelings I am unable to, and when I would most like somebody to just know what I’m feeling I have it all very conveniently hidden away.

This might have something to do with why, as a general rule, I steer away from t-shirts with slogans on them. And bumper stickers. There is very little of what I want to present of myself to the world that can be summed-up to fit on the front of my shirt. The words reveal exactly too little and too much for my comfort.

But there was one t-shirt I’ve always been sure I would wear, ever since I saw it in a catalog many years ago: If you love me read me a story. If I could change one word it would be even better: If you love me tell me a story.

*        *        *

Sunday night I walked my mom out to her car to say goodbye. She drove down to visit for roughly 38 hours and we packed it as full as we could, considering the short period of time and the fact that although every day now I feel a little better I am still not fully recovered from my bout with pneumonia.

Her visit was too-short-but-good. Saying goodbye was hard, because there were so many other things I still wanted to say and because apparently you never completely get over just wanting your mom at certain times. But somehow it was okay, anyway.

And the moon—it was so beautiful Sunday night.

So I decided even though I was tired and should go to bed that I wanted very much to try to get some pictures, to capture and hold what I saw.

*        *        *

My parents taught me, reading to my sister and I every night before bed, that a story = love. The lesson has  proved inescapable. Listening to a good story never lost its magic. In fact, each new story I hear connects and builds on the old ones, and the magic only increases.

*        *        *

I haven’t had much success with moon pictures. I know very little about shutter speed, or exposure time, or even the manual settings on my camera—it’s still sort of new, and so far I have been very undisciplined as I get to know it, content to learn as I go. Most of my pictures are despite any skill or knowledge on my part, not because of. But I got some pictures. Most of them looked from the previews like they weren’t going to turn out. But a few seemed to have promise.

So I stayed up even later to upload pictures. This should have been quick and easy, but I’ve been having technical difficulties. It took forever. My computer was so slow I finally gave up and went to bed. Spent most of Monday morning trying to coax moon pictures onto my screen, hoping they would not disappoint.  

*        *        *

Stories teach me. They change my mind, open my heart, set my hands and feet in motion. They comfort and heal, they tear open wounds, they force open eyes. Sideways, though, not straight-on, which makes them seem gentle for all their strength. They are light, shed or reflected. Meant to be listened to. Meant to be shared.

That sharing—I think that’s where the love is.

*        *        *

The pictures I hoped would turn out were for the most part a blurry disappointment. Not a single picture I took Sunday night reflected what I saw in the sky. Most of them were out of focus. None of them caught the light and detail I fell in love with, or the tremble of leaves in the wind. Two pictures, though, were clear and beautiful, true in their own way. I have no idea how I got them. 

Somehow it is still art, just not all mine.

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Grace Notes

“Let writers beware who from the start know too much about what they are doing and keep too heavy a hand on the reins. They leave too little room for luck as they tell their stories just the way Abraham and Sarah, if they know too much about what they are doing as they live their stories, leave too little room for grace.”

—Frederick Buechner, “Faith and Fiction,”

from The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction

I want to tell you about one of the few times I was sure I knew what God was doing in my life. When I got pregnant with my third child, a lot of things were up in the air. My husband was in school full-time and working almost full-time. I was embarking on my first year of homeschooling. We had no idea what was ahead as far as a job, or where we would live next, or anything else, really. But I was sure, absolutely sure, that this child was a sign of God’s blessing. I was sure that everything would be neatly tied up, just like I’d hoped, after our two years of upheaval. The baby was a sign, and I took great comfort in it.

And then I miscarried.

A miscarriage was one of those things I knew I could never handle. It is something I still don’t really know what to do with—that blessing given then taken away. And it reminds me that there are other things from my please-not-that list still waiting for me down the road. I’m not looking forward to them. And yet there is nothing to do but face them. 

And yet, also, there is more to them than their pain.

It strikes me now that the weeks following my miscarriage forced me to realize my life was not going to be the tidy little story I would have written for myself. And I was very attached to that story. Everything fit, and it was so lovely and shiny. It allowed for a few bumps, of course, because one must be realistic, but nothing too tough. It was in fact sort of smug and boring. If I were to find it in a book I can pretty much guarantee you I wouldn’t bother reading the whole thing.

That doesn’t necessarily make the story easy to give up.

I had an inkling of where the tough stuff in life can take you but I only imagined the hardness of it, because that part loomed so large it was hard to see anything else. I knew from other people’s stories about the grace that came along with it in a yeahsureofcourse sort of way. But I’m not sure the grace really starts to take hold until you need it.

I could not know until it was time how clear it would be that even while I mourned my loss there was no denying the two precious children who were with me. I could mourn—I had to—but I did not have to mourn everything. And so I was numb and I cried and I loved them even more.

I could not know until it was time how certain moments could stand out in such a way that I now carry them with me, treasures I don’t quite understand.

*     *     *

Agrement (ah-GRAY-mahnt, mahn) noun: 1. Formal approval, especially one given by a country to the proposed diplomat from another country. 2. Grace notes: notes applied as an embellishment on a piece of music. From French agreement (approval, agreement, pleasure), from Latin ad-(to) + gratus (pleasing).

—from A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Somehow these two definitions work together in my mind.

Grace notes are ornaments, hung on choice notes. You cannot ornament every note, or you would lose the melody. But certain notes, yes—especially the ones you want to stand out—and that is something that strikes me as the formal approval of a note. This one—here at the height of the phrase, or here towards the end—I want you to notice this note, especially. It is telling you something.

And often, but not always, a grace note is a dissonance—a note from outside the scale, that would sound out of place if it lasted too long. Dissonance, in order to highlight. In order to heighten the beauty.

*     *     *

There are moments that stand out from that fall:

Let some things go. This seems small, in a way, but it was freeing: it suddenly didn’t matter if my kids mixed their Play-doh colors. It was okay to use all the glitter on one project. Yes things got used up, ruined, wasted. Except none of it was wasted at all.

You don’t have to understand it. I like to understand things. At some point, something in me needs desperately to arrive at some sort of conclusion about pretty much everything. Even if I have to change my mind later. And my beautiful conclusion here was, You don’t get to know why. You don’t need to know how much of a person lived inside of you for such a short time, or anything else about this. This is just where you are. You can trust that it’s taken care of even though you can’t grasp it.

The trees, dying. It was on a family walk that it struck me how amazingly beautiful the trees were. And how surrounded I was by things dying. And that, even though I don’t think of death as the end, I still think of it as loss, and fading-away, and pain. But trees—trees facing their winter-death go out in glory. Arms stretched to heaven, they blaze, intensify, burn with color, they make you see the sky differently, they take your breath away. And it made me want to live like them, no matter what.

*     *     *

I cannot pretend to know the purpose of hard things. If you had told me, while I was reeling from a miscarriage, that it was for a purpose, or somehow for the best, I probably would have nodded in agreement. Weakly. Inside it would have torn at me.

I cannot say I understand better now, or that I do not carry scars.

And yet from that time I also carry these moments that glow.

A grace note alone is a trifle.

But with the melody—or in the telling of the story—not the one I wanted, but the one I have—there is richness. Beauty. Certain notes standing out from the rest, moments that shine through the story I didn’t know I could want.

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Hide/Grow/Reach Out: New-to-Me Books

Oh, this one in the picture has a lot of energy. All three of my kids are pretty intense, but this one’s energy is usually a lot more outwardly-directed than the others’. When she’s reading a book, though, it absorbs her fully. There’s something extra-delightful about that. It wasn’t too long ago that I wondered if she would ever sit down for a story. She is so busy, so physical. But no—when she reads, the book takes all that energy and draws it wholly into itself. This fits her personality, but I didn’t expect it.

I have been conscious, myself, of how I hide myself in books (or in making music, or creating things,) especially during hard or stressful times. Sometimes these things are escape, sometimes solace (not the same thing, those two.) But they are also places to grow. There is nothing like hearing someone else’s story to find encouragement and discover you are not alone. To seek wisdom and gain perspective. When it’s time to come back out of a book and engage your life, you have the opportunity to bring something new with you—hope, understanding, peace, strength, mercy—something. And with that something you have a new way to reach out.

How beautiful is that?

We must keep sharing this with the children around us.

To that end, I am (finally) adding to my Music Resources: Picture Books, Etc. page. The new additions are below. And if you haven’t visited this page yet, please do. I know there are books I’ve missed, so if there’s something that should be there that you don’t see, let me know in the comments!

Leave Your Sleep: A Collection of Classic Children’s Poetry, by Natalie Merchant, illustrated by Barbara McClintock, Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2012

I adore books like this—fabulous words, beautiful illustrations, and a full-length CD—in my mind that pretty much covers everything you could want. This collection was inspired by the poems, stories, and songs Natalie Merchant shared with her daughter in the first six years of her life. This is a wealth of good literature, and good art, and good music.

For the Love of Music: The Remarkable Story of Maria Anna Mozart, by Elizabeth Rusch, paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher, Tricycle Press, 2011

Maria Anna Mozart (Nannerl) was as much a child prodigy as her younger brother Wolfgang Amadeus. The two traveled and performed together all over Europe for several years. But when Wolfgang and his father left on a second trip, Maria was left behind. From that point, the siblings’ lives took different courses. Written in small segments following the form of a piano sonata, this book details Maria’s life, showing how music permeated her life, even though her opportunities as a woman were much different than her brother’s.

The Other Mozart: The Life of the Famous Chevalier de Saint-George, by Hugh Brewster, illustrated by Eric Velasquez, Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2007

Born in the West Indies in 1745 to a slave mother and wealthy plantation-owner father, Joseph de Bologne-Saint-George was raised and educated like a gentleman. When Joseph was eight his father sold his plantation and moved to Paris, bringing Joseph and his mother, now both no longer slaves, with him. He also re-named his son, giving him the title Chevalier, which was equivalent to a knight. Joseph was bright, talented, strong, and handsome, and he made a name for himself in France as a brilliant fencer, an accomplished musician, composer, and conductor, and later in life as the first black colonel in the French army. He was famous and accomplished and admired, but he also had to navigate a world in which his opportunities were quite limited by the color of his skin. His fascinating story is told in the context of the world of his time, with brief interludes telling about Paris, Haydn, Mozart, Marie Antoinette, and the French Revolution scattered through the book.

Little Stevie Wonder, by Quincy Troupe, illustrated by Lisa Cohen, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005

The story of Stevie Wonder’s life, told in energetic, poetic language and vibrant illustrations. Accompanied by a CD with two of his songs, “Fingertips,” and “Uptight (Everything’s Alright.” This is as much a tribute to the man and his work as it is a biography.

Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People, by Bonnie Christensen, Alfred A Knopf, 2001

Woody Guthrie had a hard, poor life from the start, but when he traveled from Oklahoma to California in search of a better life during the Depression and found only more hardship, and saw the plight of other migrant workers like him, he made it his mission to become their voice. He spent his life traveling across America, talking to migrant field workers, miners, and factory workers, turning their stories and their struggles into songs, as well as championing the rights of workers and the importance of unions. 

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...And Today, Words

Because there is so much I want to tell you:

...about how much I love Youngest’s purple boots, and wish I had a pair just like them. (Day 44)

...about the words the older sister spells out in Duplo blocks every week during her brother’s violin lesson, and how the word-of-the-week has become something all my students look forward to, and wonder about. (Day 3)

...about how that dried rose is beautiful, yes, but the best thing about it is that it is a birthday rose from my dad—one of many sent or given every year for as long as I can remember. (Day 31)

...about how I didn’t discover it until after I took the picture, but that heart-shaped hole in the leaf—that one’s from me, and I made Middle proud, finding it. (Day 11)

...about how many days out of the last 46 I did not know what I would share with you ahead of time, and how daily it was an act of faith and instinct to trust it was there, and find it. (Most days.)

...about how many days out of the last 46 I took comfort in finding something that spoke to me—about beauty, or what I loved, or how the extraordinary is always there just waiting to be found. (Every day.)

...about how I wish I could share with you the smells of Easter dinner cooking this afternoon, and how much I enjoy filling a place with the aroma of that sort of work.

...about how it staggers me, that cooking produces not only food but rich scents and tender bubbly sounds and warmth—how lavish is that? And how lavish is it that frost, such a small little fact in this vast world, should be so breathtakingly intricate, or that ice cubes, half-melted and refrozen in a take-out cup, are beautiful enough to become a precious jewel in the eyes of a 6 year-old? And in the eyes of her mother, too?

I wanted to explain every picture.

But maybe you saw other things. Sometimes that's where the magic happens.

The silence felt strenuous at times, but I was glad for this project. Thanks for listening a little differently through these last few weeks.

Happy Easter, friends.

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Three Things, Part 3

1. I love those cracks in life that reveal other worlds. The constant possibility of being distracted by the view out the window. The endless deep layers of everything.

2. I can’t tell you exactly what it is that I relish so much in a Mendelssohn scherzo, except to say that it is somehow related to what I relish in the sound of water, or glittering rocks, or fluttering leaves. Delicate and fast of course, but also just terribly alive. Wild, but gentle.

3. There are times when you very clearly walk in to the middle of a story, discover a different sort of crack in life:

I can tell you that this guy was released back into the wild last night, but I wonder how long he watched us from his perch on top of the kitchen cabinet, and what adventure, exactly, landed him in this particular predicament.

Do you think he went home a changed creature, with stories to tell?

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To Share:

Sarah M. shared a link to a lovely animated movie called “The Danish Poet”* in the comments of my last post. I enjoyed it and thought you all might, too, so I'm passing it along. Sometimes a good story is just the thing, don't you think? (Thank you, Sarah!)


*My computer was having some trouble with the origianl link, so this is a different one.





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Outside: Fern

“Ferns in general may be thought of as largely being specialists in marginal habitats, often succeeding in places where various environmental factors limit the success of flowering plants.”

—“Fern,” Wikipedia

Tell me about things that thrive in the shade. Things that were made not for bright light, but for cool, dappled places. That take scarcity and turn it into a profusion of green lace.

Tell me about the things that thrive off what seems like not enough. The things that take too-cold, too-dry, too-dark, and blanket them with improbable beauty.

Tell me about tender things that surprise you with their strength.

Here—I will tell you a story, too:

My grandmother, the one I never knew, was a mother and a musician and a teacher and an artist. A queenly woman. She died of pneumonia during a flu outbreak when she was only in her forties, after a lifetime of struggling with severe allergies and asthma. I have always thought of her as strong in heart, weak in body. It recently struck me, though, that a woman who survived her birth only because the neighbor lady sucked the fluid from her lungs to get her breathing, who most likely survived two bouts of tuberculosis, who struggled to breathe off and on all her life, with very little of the medical intervention available now—that woman must have been incredibly strong, period. And from everything I know about her, she lived abundantly.

Does it make sense when I tell you that I feel her legacy as keenly as that of the grandmother I knew most of my life, who lived to be 97? Neither one has seen the end of her influence.

Tell me about those things—and those people—made just for their specific time and place—the ones who blanket their world the way ferns blanket the forest floor, delicate and strong, graceful and bountiful, soaking up every last bit of light.


More in this series:     Moth, Birch, Turtle Hunting




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My Life, My Art: Janice

When I was a graduate student I used to walk through the streets of Evanston admiring the beautiful old houses and daydreaming of filling my own beautiful old house someday—not only with family but as often as possible with friends and guests—artists and musicians and writers, creators and thinkers and dreamers. I wanted to make a place where all these people could gather and talk, share and inspire and challenge each other. As it happens, my beautiful old house is far from any big city or cultural center and my friends are scattered all over the place. I don’t have friends over nearly as often as I’d like, and I’m no Gertrude Stein, anyway. But I have been blessed to know some really amazing people, and as I hear their stories and see what they are doing with their lives I still want to share their lives and their art with each other. It struck me that this blog, which is sort of a gathering-place for the things close to my heart anyway, could maybe also serve as a meeting-place.

Today I want to introduce you to my friend Janice. She has two blogs you should read (Whimsy-ma-blog, and In the Tangles) and an Etsy shop, The Whimsy, where she sells custom-made wire jewelry. She also has adorable children with big brown eyes and loads of personality. And she is one of those mysterious people who can speak knowingly about things like rocket science.

I’m honored that she accepted my request to share this part of her story:



Until Karen’s invitation to write a blog post about a remembrance necklace that I make, I had not realized that I could write a full length book about it. Since it seemed like sending Karen a 90,000 word manuscript might be taking advantage of her hospitality, I’ve attempted to sort out one piece of my thoughts.

The second of our four children, Jack, was diagnosed with a complex heart defect while I was pregnant with him. Essentially his heart ended up with two working chambers instead of four. Those two chambers tried heroically for nine weeks after his birth to pump the blood his tiny body needed. We tried to help with intensive care units and surgeries, but in the end it was only God who could redeem such an insufficient heart. And instead of healing it here he chose to take Jack’s entire little being, exhausted heart and all, to heaven.

I was already making wire jewelry for a little online shop, so I decided to make myself a remembrance necklace for Jack. The point of it was a longing to hold him so I ended up with a shape that reminded me of two arms encircling something precious.

Silent

One thing I wanted was for my necklace to be silent.

I had looked for a remembrance necklace but they all had words or dates or angels or babies. I wanted something that I understood but that would remain silent when it was shown to the world. If I felt like sharing its meaning, I wanted to be the one to do it. Losing my baby is hard and deep and although I’d like to talk to you about it, I’m not always sure that I can.

Because sadness makes me uncomfortable. It gives me irresistible urges to tell inappropriate jokes. It leaves me feeling speechless and helpless. And as far as I can tell, no one else likes to be sad either, so watching your discomfort grow as I talk about it just makes everything harder.

In fact, I realize that I have always thought that sadness has no place here. If you do things right, if you always offer your friend the bigger cookie, if you believe in God, then there won’t really be much sadness. Sad has no place in a good life.
 
I’ve been wrong. Parts of the great sponge of life are saturated with sadness. But there are days that I’m tired of sloshing around in it. I want to tiptoe past the gloom and bounce around in happiness and cheer.

Wondering if someone else might feel the same as I did, I listed the necklace in my shop. I was a bit stunned when the first order came through. Then others did as well and I began to realize that it was the silence of it that mothers liked. Many of the necklaces I’ve made were for babies lost through miscarriage. So much of that grief is privately mourning our own dreams and imaginings of this child that we were able to hold so incompletely.

Silent…but so very noisy.

I also discovered that this necklace was the noisiest silent thing I’ve ever heard.

While the necklace was silent to the world at large, probably even because of that silence, it seemed to create a safe place for mourning mothers to talk. Orders came through wet with tears. My heart breaks with each email that begins with, “I know I’ve never met you, but I don’t know anyone else who’s been through this and no one seems to understand…”

And for each email I am so grateful that she has someone to talk to, but then I’m freaked out that the someone is me. Because losing my baby is hard and deep and I’m not good at sharing hard and deep things. I made the necklace silent and you wanting to talk about it makes me want to run. Except that I understand you too well, so how can I leave you here alone?

I debate every so often about not making the necklaces anymore. I’d much rather make something happy. Something made out of rainbows and gumdrops - or a magic fat-dissolving suit.

But every time I have just about convinced myself to quit, I get an email from some heartbroken mother and she thanks me for this necklace. Thanks me for its silence. Thanks me for talking to her. So I decide to fight the urge to run for a little longer and allow myself to go back in and meet her there in the sad place where she is.

I’m beginning to accept that although sadness isn’t the only character in life, it plays a bigger role than I expected. Sometimes sloshing through sadness is part of the life we have here. God hasn’t removed the sadness, it’s leaking out of all sorts of places and we can’t keep from at least getting damp. It’s not comfortable or fun, but I begin to see the value in it, the extraordinary amount of life and passion that exists in our sadness. There is such openness and raw humanity in meeting someone in their grief.

The necklace sits silently on my dresser and tells me that there is sadness because life is so precious and good. If life was worthless it would never be mourned. We’d brush off its ending as though shooing a fly. But that silent wish to hold a tiny life is a good wish because the tiny life is good.

And dare I say that the sadness of mourning can be good? Not pleasant, certainly, but good? That there is value in missing someone because it is a reflection of the love you have for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pretty sure I’d shove an old lady out of the way to get to it if there were only one Sad-Free Life left on the shelf. But since I don’t think any of those are available, I am learning a new level of comfort in a place where sadness can be acknowledged and quietly shared.



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