A First Birthday.... and a Day in the Country

I'm in Oxford.... Ohio, this week. Noelle Kathryn is one year old and I came to celebrate. And we discovered farm animals together. That's one of my first loves so it seems very appropriate.

I was raised on a dairy farm in Alaska and mostly remember Holsteins- the black and white milk cows but all farm animals smell like home- or money! as my dad used to say. Baby animals and the fragrant turning of the cool dirt means spring to me and pumpkins and petting farms say autumn all over the midwest.

So Happy  Birthday, our sweet autumn baby girl.  We're glad you're here and part of our family.

These grandchildren just get cuter and cuter. I'm a blessed woman.

"These are balloons, Noelle! Fun, aren't they!"

"Can I help!!!!" says big brother. "She's not even paying attention to the presents...."

"I LOVE these little people"

I also came to visit my favorite grandson. My "grandma name" is Bebe but he calls me "Bee". He can call me anything at all.  I'm putty in his hands.

And today we were off to the farm!

"Noelle, this is a goat."

"Goats are fun!" 

"Meet your first horse, Noelle. You laugh but he's trying to eat your skirt"

This sheep will stand still for photos, unlike a one year old!

Cuties in the corn bin. We found it in their pockets at home. :)

Total concentration

As a little girl, my daughter wanted to grow up and live on a farm.
She's older and wiser but don't they look great there? 

Ended the farm day on a hayride to the pumpkin patch. Tons of pumpkins and we were able to leave the field without buying one or having a meltdown scene. A perfect end to the day.

"Happy Birthday, baby girl!"

I love the memories of my farm childhood and I'm grateful my grandchildren can at least be exposed to American farms.  I want them to understand where our food comes from, the hard work it takes, the special families that do that work.   This was a good first step.

Going home after a wonderful day at a farm. 

Mosaics- beauty from broken pieces

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It is a technique of decorative art or interior decoration. Most mosaics are made of small, flat, roughly square, pieces of stone or glass of different colors, known as tesserae; but some, especially floor mosaics, may also be made of small rounded pieces of stone, and called "pebble mosaics".  Thank you, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic

art...creating...... assemblage......technique....decorative....what's missing?

Wow- fun- breaking stuff- more fun- putting pieces together- design- laughter- permanent- aha moments- new from old- beauty from brokenness....  Mosaic creation is a lot like life. 

Judy collects cool stuff and buys some cool stuff and shares with her students. She's wonderful. 

 We had the practical stuff too.  Containers, paper towels, masks to protect from grout powder, water, q-tips. You need tools and stuff to make beauty from broken pieces.




So many choices.  Some we choose, some choose us.

It starts to come together, a piece at a time. No longer is any piece a part of the original. 

Each adds to the final design.  And the design come together. 

It won't look like what we had in mind but when you first start, it's better not to have a specific end in mind. Be flexible. Let the broken pieces guide you.  Maybe you don't have to be in control. 

Now we rest. We wait.  Let the pieces of glass and ceramic settle into the glue, let the bond form.

If you disrupt this process, the tesserae won't be firmly in place.  The end result will miss what completes it.  There will be a gap, a hole. And that's all you'll see.

We return to Judy's to view our project.  Inspect the solidity of our work. We wiggle tesserae and check that sharp pieces don't extend past the edge.  We're creating art to handle, to feel, to experience with more than just eyes.

Pieces that are loose are re-glued. Security is important to wholeness. It's looking good!

Then we cover the entire board with thick, mucky grout.

 Dark, wet, messy, squishing into cracks and crevasses.  

Cover the pieces, lose the design, bury the thing. 

We've made a mess. Did we screw the whole thing up? 

No.....

We carefully wiped each surface that we wanted revealed. 

Gently removed the grout from the glass and ceramics but left what will hold the beauty in place.

Use tender fingers around shards of broken glass.  Explore with q-tips.

Learn from others. 

Add found objects. 

See what emerges from the process. 

There is more work to do.  Sealing the grout.  Polishing with vinegar water.  But the big work is done.  Now I just get to enjoy. And remember.

Once broken, 

now not just repaired

but repurposed for new beauty, new wholeness. 

Mosaic

God bless you for your kindness and generosity, Judy.  We had a wonderful two days with you.

http://www.pendletonartworks.com/

Grief and the abundance of life

This morning I dumped goat cheese on my scrambled eggs and was reminded of my cousin who works in a fabulous cheese emporium. A fancy name for a store or market but the root is from Latin poros, which means journey.  Cheese and gourmet goodies travel from the world to Longmont, Colorado and they are delicious. Decadent. A far cry from gooey "American" cheese food.   And when my brother in law died, that decadent and delicious foods showed up at Janet's house.

In the midst of grief and sorrow, our cousin put together an extravagant basket of French cheeses, little toast things, spreads and jams, smoked salmon and these little melt-in-your mouth shortbread lemon bites.  We endured  the funeral, survived the reception and returned to an empty house- starving.  We attacked her bounty of expensive gourmet food like it was McDonald's french fries and we had just hiked in from Outer Mongolia.

We sat on the floor and ate with our hands. We opened wine and gorged ourselves with the most amazing meal. We were loved in an extravagant, outlandish fashion.... and after a week of "consolation carbohydrates" we deserved it.  Or did we?

Do we deserve extravagance in the midst of pain? 

Do we deserve abundance in the face of tremendous loss? 

Do we deserve to love and laugh after all the pain, in the middle of raw grief? 

All I know is we were renewed in our spirits, 

united in our love and laughter 

and humbled by this gift.  

We appreciated the lasagnas that had streamed into the house- well, not all of us. This was an Italian family, lasagna a family meal. My niece refused to eat it without her dad.   But we were grateful for the kindness of friends and neighbors who brought pizzas and pastas and casseroles and cookies and sweet rolls.  But when a basket of expensive abundance was placed in our hands, we were delighted. Overwhelmed by the sheer generosity.  Amazed that fine food could so restore our spirits on a bleak day.  And if we had know what was in the basket, "Of course we would have invited you back to the house." My brother and his family had lived in France for years and had to settle for leftovers the next day.  I have no pictures but will put in a shameless plug!  http://www.cheeseimporters.com/home.html

Fast forward a few months and now we are purging Janet's home of all unnecessary items- she is moving from a house into an apartment and most has to go.  We are in the midst of a garage sale- which surely would have made Dante's list of one level of hell if he ever had to endure one.  It's humiliating to place your treasures on the yard and have people paw through them.  It's discouraging to expect a decent price or understanding from strangers. Garage sales suck. 

But in the midst of that difficulty, God sent Judy.  She was a volunteer at their town's performing and visual art center when Janet worked there. She came to the yard sale to help, to buy stuffed animals for a mission on the Mexican border and perhaps find mirrors for her latest mosaic piece.  We appreciated her help, gave her all the stuffed animals and were delighted when she offered us a mosaic class.  We had a ton of tasks, mostly heartbreaking and all exhausting and had no time for play. 

But play we did. I set out to talk about Judy and our classes but food took over instead. But both were extravagant signs of abundance in the midst of grief and turmoil.  Both were gratefully received and both brought life and hope, laughter and beauty. One was consumed within a few days but we treasure the memory. The other is a more permanent sign of friendship and fun.  Both were generous reminders of grace, abundance in the scarcity of grief. 

These are half finished.... the story will continue.

So do we deserve....

 beauty, kindness, grace, abundance, care, laughter.... 

extravagance....at any time?

I don't know what we deserve but we thrive on all these gifts and they are small pieces of love that create a thing of beauty- in our lives, in our families, in our communities.  Next time I want to give with abundance into the dark of someone's grief. 

Sunshine and Fog- it's South Dakota!

We just returned from the fabulous South Dakota Festival of Books.
http://www.sdbookfestival.com/events.htm

This year was in Sioux Falls- which has 24 miles of bike trails.... none of which go east-west, the way we needed to go from our campground to the downtown festival venues!

 But we did get in a few great rides. 

Then we headed west- Janet had never been to Wall, SD- home of the "world famous" Wall Drug. Free ice water in the 1930's transformed a small town drug store into a small town legend.

https://walldrug.com/t-history.aspx

The most compelling moment? Not the terrifying tyrannosaurus rex that tries to escape and EAT every 12 minutes.... 

Not the bobble heads....https://walldrug.com/c-58-bobble-heads.aspx

 No- what amazed us was original art including SD's much beloved native son, Harvey Dunn,- hanging on the wall.... across from the grill.  Yep, greasy dirt was building up on the frames. Can't imagine what's happening to the art itself.  But it is very accessible and some really fine art to gaze at while in line for a big, delicious pecan roll. This is the owner's view from a newspaper article a few years ago. Pretty cool.

It may be the finest private collection of Western art on free public view anywhere in the world, he said.

One small stretch of wall, facing the doughnut counter, contains more than half a million dollars' worth of fine art - including an original N.C. Wyeth painting, "The Devil's Whisper," and two of the store's dozen Harvey Dunns, "Punching it Out" and "Gray Dawn."

"There's no other place where we could put them and expose this many people to them for free," Hustead said.

The whole story is here if you're interested.
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/top-stories/the-water-s-free-but-the-art-s-worth-millions/article_ffbfd813-7078-5b17-8756-c6810175af44.html
Or
http://www.truewestmagazine.com/jcontent/living-the-dream/living-the-dream/collectibles/4325-wall-drug-of-south-dakota



But we had places to be and mile to go before we slept so we went to the Badlands National Park to see a spectacular sunset, stars without light pollution and sunrise over the amazing sites.....





or fog.

It was compelling and different. The various minerals showed pink and green and the ridges were eery against the white sky.  This is within a couple of hours of my home- we'll be back but for now, we saw the Badlands in the fog.  And didn't see any snakes.

 

Unpaved roads may be impassible in wet conditions....

And shoes may be caked with sticky, mucky goo.....

Views may be obscured.....

Ducks may be glum......

But the prairie is still lovely......

Beauty is still evident to the eyes that look. 

Kayaks in the sunset,

art by the donut counter, 

water droplets on the late summer grass.

South Dakota-

you never know what you'll get. 

Always Daddy's girls

"Here's to husbands," and I raised my paper cup of root beer and ice cream to my sister's cup.  We looked at each other and tears dribbled down our cheeks.

"How did we get here?" was her reply.


The day was the eighth anniversary of my husband's death from a particularly nasty cancer- although I'm not sure there is any other type. Every year on this anniversary and on his birthday in March, friends and family celebrate his life with his favorite- root beer floats.  I was fifty-one when he died.  Now my fifty-one year old sister shares root beer and widowhood with me.

We'd never been together to share this little ritual or this sisterhood, this sorority that no woman wants to join.  We reminisced about our marriages and laughed through our tears at what we imagined our husbands' reaction to all the recent upheaval, our dreams, our plans, our silliness.

"They's think we lost our minds," my sister said dryly. She paused and sipped. A fresh gush of tears. She looked up at me and choked over her next words,

"But somewhere, Daddy is really proud of us." 

And we sipped over the salty lumps in our throats. Public ice cream parlors are lousy venues for teary widows.



Our father wasn't perfect but somehow in the midst of imperfect parenting, misunderstandings and stormy teen years, we learned that he believed in us. His words still pop up in our vocabulary- especially "Dawn's cracked, time's a-wasted."   He taught us by his example that men treat women well- they try to provide and protect.  He taught us to ski but more importantly, he taught us to persevere and face our fears. We stood together on the mountain ridge we had just labored up and plunged together over the edge. We saw him rejoice in the sheer thrill of snow flying behind as he sped down the hill and we followed his lead.  He also taught us to maintain control, to watch out for beginners, to be considerate in an activity that promoted self indulgent hot-dogging.

By his example, we learned to work hard, to love one spouse, to commit to our children but also to stand outside on a starry night and breathe deep. Like him we love the feel of a camera in our hand and the elusive perfect picture.  He was a dairy farmer who went to art museums and took us with him. In retirement, he hauled marble on his back off a Colorado mountain and then created clocks from the rocks, which he gave away.

And somewhere, he has two daughters who are grateful, who still miss him, who try to notice the stars..

and who are really proud of him.

"Thank you, Daddy."

Roses on the trail

I've been writing more poetry lately, expressing my emotions with one goal of helping others to express theirs.  And given my season there has been grief, sorrow, pain. It's been good, exhausting but good.  Cathartic. 

But I also recognize my heart's need to keep my focus on beauty, the present moment, the joy of life. I just wrote job of life- perhaps they are one the the same, 

the job of life is to recognize the joy of life. 

So I went for a walk along the Mickelson Trail, the rails-to-trails path that meanders around and through Hill City. As I walked along the old train bed, I thought of my father-in-law and his life of logging and hard work here in the Hills. I thought of my father and his labor both in Alaska and later, back in his native state of Colorado.  It was becoming a bittersweet hike. 

Then I saw roses.  Wild roses peeking through the grasses and wildflowers along the trail. These are not fragile hybrids nor showy floribundas with stunning blooms, not even the carpet roses I'd love to cultivate down a slope. These are the tough little creepers shyly filling in with fragile pink heads. The season is coming to a close and they are shedding their petals, preparing to form tough little rose hips. 

It took me back to my Alaskan childhood and the wild roses along the lawn's edge where the grass met the tangle of trees between us and a neighbor.  Wild but profuse, I loved their blooms and made "tea" from the rose hips.   So.... an ode to roses. 

The History of Roses

by Kathryn Cleveland

Dark curls bent over to smell the fragrance of summer,

tiny fingers poking yellow fluffy in the center. 

Beauty beguiling the innocent. 

Squatting by the edge in the shade of pale white birches,

I stir plucked rose hips into cool water.

A lovely tea for two. 

Childhood behind, 

now years of hothouse roses, my lover's choice to woo me.

Love on a long, thornless stem.

Today memories surface with each step,

of railroads and hard work, of beloved men who lived well.

And for me- another gift of roses.

The dark curls have faded but I crouch to inhale their perfume,

gently brush the pale yellow stamens and loose a flutter of petals,

of the wild prairie rose tangled at my feet. 

Like a child- I am beguiled by their beauty, 

I am steeped with love and tender joy.