Summer Begins

I knew last week would be busy.  It was the last five days of school with all the normal busy-ness of that time of year.  The added stress was that the classroom needed to be entirely packed by noon Friday ~ every book, file, activity, and piece of paper needed to be in a box, file cabinet, or crate because everything is being moved to a room-not-yet-determined.  Final count: 53 boxes, 7 file cabinets, 10 crates, and the assorted odd-shaped large items in trash bags and labeled.

So I did something smart ~ I took myself to the movies after school on Monday.  I saw I'll See You In My Dreams and have been thinking about the movie ever since.

Blythe Danner stars.  Blythe Danner is the embodiment of grace, poise, beauty, understated emotion, and she can sing.  The story is of a woman named Carol who has crafted a life.  She has friends who want her to move to their retirement village, but Carol likes living alone.  She has a routine and has tried to shield herself from further heartbreak. 

Then she has a conversation with the guy who cleans her pool, and her world expands a bit.  Their talks are about real life questions and willingness to keep trying.  Carol sings.  She meets a man.  She makes small changes.  Carol is my new role model.  Through the losses and the gains she keeps going.

I was crying within the first ten minutes.  Later I laughed out loud.  I sat entranced as Carol sang.  At one emotional point Carol tells her daughter that she still has two boxes in the guest room she should go through before she leaves,  and I was crying again.  That is how it really happens, this thing about life moving forward.  People leave.  Others are left behind.  We take a risk because we think we finally found the thing missing, and then it doesn't work out.  Relationships change, sometimes in ways over which we have no control.  Friends rally.  Maybe we take a trip....

I am traveling this week.  The timing is only because this was the biggest chunk of time we had this summer to take a road trip.  I am channeling Carol as life keeps happening in spite of my desire to push the pause button.   Maintaining a sense of calm is always a good choice.

I Am Not Invisible

Dear Hair Stylist,

I appreciate the phone message you left at 4:24 on Tuesday to apologize for running late.  I do not plan to reschedule.

It had already been a bad day.  I stood outside in the cold rain for 50 minutes on recess duty and wasn't able to get warm the rest of the afternoon.  As I left the building for my 4:00 hair appointment I passed the library where staff had gathered to interview for the two positions for which I applied but was not invited to interview.

When I arrived at the shop there were others waiting.  By 4:10 everyone else had been attended to, so I confirmed at the desk that I had a 4:00 appointment.  Yes, they said, and you were running late.  I watched you chatting and laughing with the woman in your chair.  I calculated the minimum I could ask you to do so I could meet my later commitment.  At 4:18 you and she walked past me into another room without acknowledging my presence.  If I was in the chair by 4:20 I'd be okay; I had 30-40 minutes for a haircut but not 50-60.  But you didn't return.  I asked myself what I needed to do to feel okay.  At 4:20 I told the woman at the desk I had to leave.

I do like the way you cut my hair.  I do not like the way I feel in the shop where you work.

Sincerely,
Sharon

Looking For Tulips

I took a spin around the yard in the rain this morning, hoping against hope that I'd find a tulip.  I did see that the bleeding heart continues to bloom~

The lilies of the valley are the loveliest they've ever been, but no tulips are blooming in that bed~

There is a pink lady slipper blooming among the phlox, but no tulips~

 

 

The first iris is blooming, with the promise of more to come, but no tulips~

The three holly bushes we transplanted from my daughter's yard are doing well, but the tulips over there aren't blooming either~

Last year this time I had dozens of tulips in bloom.  This year I will have to be happy with the hundreds of tulips we enjoyed last weekend at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay.  It was the earliest in the season we've been to the Gardens, and it my daughter's first visit ever.  The bonus was that Maine residents get free admission on Memorial Day Weekend.  The tulips were gorgeous~

We went late in the day once the crowds had thinned out.  It was sunny and breezy and lovely.  Ken went for a hike along the Back River and met us back at the Visitor Center as the park was closing.  Perfect timing as there were no lines to exit~

Note to self:  next year look for tulips in Boothbay~

Perspective Is Everything

Two weeks ago I saw the movie While We're Young.  It looked like fun and I wanted to see Naomi Watts in her latest role.  I enjoyed her performances in Birdman, as an actress, and St. Vincent, as a Russian stripper.  In this current release she and Ben Stiller play a 40-something married couple, Cornelia and Josh, dealing with the shift in their friendships as their friends have babies.  Cornelia and Josh are befriended by a younger couple that introduces them to new experiences, and in the beginning they find it exciting and fun.  Then the reality of what the younger couple is really after sets in, and Cornelia and Josh take a hard look at where they are in their lives, what they value, and what they really want.

It's this last part that made the movie for me.  I've been thinking about it for two weeks.  The message, for me, is that our experiences make us who we are and we continue to evolve as long as we choose to.  At every age we question where we've been and what's next.  At any age we can learn more and change course if that makes sense.

I feel unfinished, and that is okay with me.  I don't know what's next, and I have decided that is my new normal.  That's hard to explain to people who make plans and follow through.  My plans haven't worked out, so I either need to be okay with that and move on, or give up.  I haven't given up.

Reflections on this movie have shone a new light on how I can feel about where I am in life.

My new motto is, "While I'm young."  With that in mind, there isn't anything I can't do.

Waking Up

There are crocus blooming in my yard.  This is big news because after the winter we've had I do not take such signs of life for granted.  There are trees down in the woods and the rhododendron plants may not come back this time.  The splashes of purple and white are a welcome sight and will hopefully signal to others that it's safe to come out of the ground.

Over the last month I have composed a dozen posts.  None were right ~ not the words or the tone or the message.  I wondered if perhaps I was done writing here, but I decided to wait and see if the words came to me.  I have read books and watched movies, looking for clues, which was an impossible task really because so many things have been impossible to explain.

This is April vacation for me this week.  I have a lot to do so I have several projects going on at once.  If life is already busy why not tear apart closets while I'm at it?  I got into a closet yesterday that needed going through and found all kinds of office supplies I have been looking for for months.  At the bottom of a pile of papers was a copy of a poem that someone gave me several years ago.  I do that sometimes, leave poems mixed in with papers or books so that I come across them later.  It's like planting surprises for myself, although it's not a surprise when the words are exactly the ones I need.

The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Rumi -

These are the words that came to me, literally. 
Because the journey continues, I'll be back soon ~ 

March Winds

I like dates, especially the way dates overlap over the course of years.  It seems each family has their fair share of birthdays doubled up on the same date.  We have those as well as a number of life-changing events that share the same day. With all the dates on a calendar I wonder why so many important happenings cluster on or around the same day.

Recently, glaring examples of this phenomenon have come to my attention, coincidences that I was unaware of. 

I was putting together an album of photos I took of my daughter's house during the last weeks she lived there.  We have hundreds of photos taken over the almost 29 years we lived there as a family, rooms as backdrops tell the story of where the house started and how it changed over the years.  But my daughter wanted a series of pictures of the house as she lived in it, so I took several photos of each room as the house was listed for sale.  Once the house was sold I returned to take a series of photos of the empty rooms on the last day she lived there, which was September 7, 2014.  In the photo album I wanted to include the date of when Ken and I bought the house, which the original mortgage agreement records as September 7, 1978.  That was a stunner even for me.

It was in March of 1978 that Ken and I made a trip to Maine to look for jobs so we could relocate.  I can't find the exact date but it was sometime between March 20 and March 27.

On March 24, 2007 we moved into the house where we currently live.

One year later I started this blog.  At the time I didn't realize the coincidence.

I have been writing here for seven years.  Usually this day comes and goes with no recognition on my part.  Some years it gets to be April before I think, "How long have I been blogging?"

But this year I have been acutely aware of time and dates and years since this or that has happened.

This week I looked back at some of my earliest posts.  In writing about a corduroy quilt I had recently finished I wrote:     Each of the quilts I have made represents a period in my life. Upon reflection I decided that this corduroy quilt could represent my life after the move to the country, which is rich with color and texture while it is uneven and asymmetrical. I can plan small sections, but I have no idea what the final product will look like.

There was no way I could know how prophetic those words would be.  I had no idea how much life would change in the coming years.  At that time it felt like so much was possible. 

The March winds this year have carried bitterly cold temperatures right to my door.  It seems a fitting start to spring after a long, dark winter.     

Flower Gardens

More than forty years ago my Great Aunt Kate, who raised my mom and in my eyes was my grandmother, started a quilt.  For decades she had saved scraps from every piece of clothing she had made so she could someday make a quilt.  Over the course of years she cut small hexagons from the fabric and started making "flowers" for what I have named Kate's Flower Garden Quilt~

As she pieced the quilt she included single hexagons in various patterns among the flowers she'd sewn together~

The result was a colorful array of hexagons, some organized and some not, in an unfinished odd-shaped quilt top, which I inherited.  Aunt Kate had envisioned a quilt backed in lavender, so I bought a sheet in that color and stored it away with the quilt top for many years.  I just wasn't sure how to finish it off.  I don't remember when I pulled it out to see what I could do, but it was at least a dozen years ago, because I decided it made no sense to have something so dear to my late aunt stowed away in a dark closet.  I took pieces from one end and added them to one side to even up the size and shape.  I didn't want to lose the unique zig-zag edge so I hand stitched the top onto the sheet, the edges of the sheet folded under the quilt to create a pastel frame for the memories in fabric my dear aunt collected over decades~

I saved all the left-over pieces with the thought that someday I would find a creative way to join them together with other fabrics that held special meaning.  That day came three years ago when I was re-organizing my own stash of scraps and came across the fabrics I had saved from a quilt I made my daughter the year before. I sewed hexagon "flowers" onto brightly colored squares.   I also had several strips in those colors, as well as some salvaged strips of strawberry fabric from some unknown source saved solely because the pattern reminded me of Aunt Kate.  I put all of it aside until I pulled it out again last summer and laid it out on the living floor to see what could be done to bring it all together.  I remembered a large piece of fabric, that I bought so long ago I don't remember where it came from, that held all the same bright colors.  A second, smaller Kate's Flower Garden Quilt II came together.  This week I finished the hand quilting.  I think Aunt Kate would approve~    

The backing fabric is printed with the words of the song "Simple Gifts," a song we sang around the camp fire all the years Ken and I attended family camp with the kids at Pilgrim Lodge in West Gardiner, Maine.  According to Wikipedia, "Simple Gifts" was written by Elder Joseph Brackett in 1848 while he was at the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine. These are the lyrics to his one-verse song:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,

To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come 'round right.