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May
11
it occurs to me today that a mother’s love is like a stream: amorphous water that manages to keep moving regardless. trees become dislodged upstream, rocks float downstream and stop, and the water simply moves around or over or under or sometimes through. never stopping. knowing - in ways that only water can know - that eventually someone or something will come along to move - or at least reposition - the obstacle.
comes a storm or melting snow causing the stream to swell and churn, the agitation mudding and obscuring, making it hard-to-impossible to see through to what lies on the bottom. and still the stream continues to flow, eventually slowing down to its usual comfortable, familiar pace when clarity returns as the debris settles.
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May
10
contained
Filed Under Autoquiltography
today, on mother’s day eve, i took refuge in the familiar land of bookmaking and accomplishment, creating a journal to accompany autoquiltography one. a container of irregular, asymmetrical pages
wrapped in a placemat because table linens are the stuff of which all of my autoquiltography pieces are made
lined in fabric that conjures images of gold threads navigating a natural terrain filled with options and possibilities, the threads randomly leading to places of safe exposure where mother and child retreat, commune, learn.
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May
9
have seen in the past few weeks that some people are like these grasses: soft and graceful when viewed from afar but get close and you find their razor-sharp edges.
today, though, it was time to leave the world of grasses and create a brand new world of my own clothimation:
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Apr
30
oh joy. oh bliss. oh rapture. today i leap back into the world of the positive as i share with you some Very Good News: in the past hour, i received an email from ebay notifying me that the star next to my name is now blue.
yes, indeed. you are reading this from the fingertips of an ebay blue starer. 50 - count them - 50 people have said good things about me. i hope you can hear the trumpets bleating and the firecrackers snapping in the background while the parade comes to order and prepares to promenade.
the email goes on to say that my blue star is from purchases only and asks (perhaps logically) why don’t i consider SELLING something. there’s even a tutorial available to help me get started selling.
with promises of how quick and easy it is to sell on ebay, i’m thinking that maybe this is not such a bad idea. maybe this is divine providence. a sign. the proverbial window opening.
here’s what i have so far:
Straw Ripe for Spinning into Gold
Free Shipping!
Buy It Now - oh, please, please, PLEASE buy it now
Ships to: anywhere in the universe and beyond
For your consideration and creative pleasure, I offer my memories of events of last week. The physical aspects of the trauma have already been experienced, true, but the opportunity for spinning straw - and in this case, poison ivy, pinestraw, and miscellaneous other botanical bits, too - into gold still available. Offer presents vast opportunity for finding something good in a horrible situation involving one’s inhumanity to another.
Seller: Woman who was much younger this time last week
Feedback: 100% positive, a real blue star kind of gal
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Apr
27
postcard: deconstruction begins
Filed Under Postcards
today i work on deconstruction, disassembling a piece that i am unhappy with without any idea what it will look like when i put it back together. as i work, pieces of another less tangible cloth also in process of being reworked become clear:
- it’s important to have recent pictures of loved ones - regardless of their age - stored in your phone or in a thumbnail drive that is always on your person.
- children and parents are never too old to have a common secret code word, phrase, or sentence that when uttered, alerts the listener of danger and the need for immediate help.
tiny little pieces to be sure, but it’s a start.
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Apr
26
postcard from the past few days
Filed Under Postcards
one day i’m gathering red clay for autoquiltography two, the next day i’m enduring a police search that spanned hours, days, eons. my daughter - my beautiful, talented, intelligent, messy daughter was missing.
someone slipped a date rape drug into her drink, and the next thing she knew it was around 2 a.m. she called us. her dad answered. speaking very, very quietly, she asked, “dad, are you okay?”
“yes, i’m fine.”
“are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again.
“yes, i’m sure i’m fine.”
he hung up and crawled back in bed. “what was that about?” i asked.
“oh, she was just having a bad dream, i guess. she said i’d just called her to say i wasn’t feeling well.”
the phone rang again, and she explained that the first call was a ploy to get her out, away. she told them that her girlfriend had just called saying she wasn’t well. told them she needed to go outside to see if she could get better cell phone reception.
“where are you?” her dad asked.
“i don’t know,” she said. “i’m walking along a 2-lane road. it’s dark. i think i’m in coweta county, but i don’t know. i’ve been in a house that wasn’t really a house because it had no roof.”
and then we lost the connection - maybe because of cell phone coverage, maybe because of something we were not willing to name. we dressed and numbly headed out, first going by her house just in case the dream theory had been accurate.
it wasn’t.
we drove in the direction of where she thought she might be, but quickly realized that we’d be looking for a needle without even knowing where the haystack was, so we went to the police department. the search in the neighboring county was just beginning as we got there. moxie had, it turns out, tried to flag down a car as she talked to her dad the second time. the car didn’t stop, but the driver did call the local police who drove to the area in search of.
meanwhile, moxie heard something that made her think they were coming back after her. dropping her shoes, purse, and phone, she dashed into the nearby woods where she spent the next 6-8 hours laying on the ground covered with pinestraw to avoid detection. it was dark - country dark. there were no houses, no street lights, clouds between her and the moon.
back at the police department, we asked if the cell phone company couldn’t ping her phone to give us further information about her location. (we watch a lot of law and order.) tmobile held up the search for almost 45 minutes, but they eventually pinged her phone and the search shifted to another location. to have something to do, hubbie and i called her phone repeatedly in hopes that the ring wasn’t turned off, and knowing that even if it was on quiet mode, the screen lights up to indicate an incoming call. eventually we came home and hubbie continued to dial her number from here while i came back to the computer and - winning the argument with my self that asked what could they possibly do and why bother them - emailed 3 close friends, asking them to hug me, hug her, hug us. i called my son/her brother who is across the country from us. called him not because there was a single thing he could do, but because i promised him that no matter how far away he roams, he will never, ever be left out of the loop.
the police called: pinging indicated movement, the search was shifting again.
her cell phone now rang right into voice mail, indicating her battery was dead or the phone had been turned off. i didn’t know which i would rather be the case.
i got sleepy - a good sign. a welcomed sign. for all my life, whenever there’s any type of crises or emergency, if i get sleepy, it’s a sign to me that everything is going to be all right. it’s a signal from my body that has never failed me, i hoped the string of signal accuracy would remain intact.
i showered. washed my hair. changed clothes. waited.
finally, eventually, came a call that she had been found. stay tuned, they said. we’ll let you know where you can pick her up. then, about 30 minutes later, came the call saying what i’d been crafting in my head all night: “she’s here. come get her.”
she was scratched from head to toe. bruised. scraped. bitten. but she was alive and in our arms.
we left the police department and, at her request, headed right back out to where she thought she had been held, pulled over to the side of the road, and walked the edge of the woods in search of her pocketbook, shoes, and phone. seeing how unpopulated the area is, seeing how close the woods are to the road, imagining her terror, we searched in silence. finding nothing, we called off our search and headed home, listing all the things that would need to be done, all the calls that would have to be made, following the loss of her pocketbook and phone. it was the only way we could bring order to this chaos. it was something we were in control of.
bringing her to our house. i helped her wash off the grime and pick the bits of nature from her hair and dab salve on her scrapes and cuts and scratches while hubbie went back out to search the area by himself, and this time, he was successful. he found everything. . . including massive beds of poison ivy in the vicinity of where she dropped everything and ran into the woods.
despite our best efforts at prevention, last night the poison ivy erupted angrily all over her body. we dabbed on every over-the-counter remedy available, but none could match - let alone counter - the fierceness of the outburst, so this morning she went to the local doctor in search of something stronger. and though she received an injection of cortisone (that now seems to be taking effect), she was also treated in a way that made her feel humiliated and victimized again by someone who is obviously not fluent in or a graduate of sensitivity training.
but that, too, is behind us. now no more than a thread woven into this cloth of a story. a story i share not with moxie’s permission - because i didn’t ask - but with her what’s the word . . . something approaching encouragement. (brain is doing it again: closing the gate, saying that’s enough for now.) she feels that remaining silent gives away her power. and she knows that it takes so much more energy to manufacture something to explain her recent withdrawal and appearance - energy that she’d rather invest elsewhere.
we both slept this afternoon for the first time since wednesday night: and it felt good. a rich, deep sleep. like we’d fallen off the edge of the universe, free-floating in darkness where nobody could reach us. at least for a while.
yesterday afternoon, she remembered one little morsel that sent her into another chapter of post-trauma, and as we came face-to-face, as we could no longer close our eyes to the enormity of what might have happened, we went nothing short of catatonic.
but she’s here. and we will (eventually) be okay, getting back to the new normal.
whatever that is.
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Apr
22
hues of home
Filed Under Autoquiltography
i spent earth day collecting red clay from spots of earth where i grew up. the house my mom and dad built where i spent my baby days - the H can still be seen in the chimney. red dirt from the land where my doting grandparent’s house once stood. red clay from the yard of the house that sheltered me during my teenage years. (also took 2 irises - with current owner’s permission, of course - to my mother, the one who planted them oh so many years ago.) red clay from the first house hubbie and i designed and built and in which we raised our tiny tots and watched them take their first steps of independence as they walked from home to yea yea and car car’s house. red dirt from the approximate area where my uncle gene was killed in a freak accident just a few years before i was born. (eugene ~ me, jeanne.)
and so it begins: autoquiltography two, the next ten years.
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Apr
19
getting a handle on things
Filed Under Natural Curl
i have been worried of late that with changing hormones and all, i am becoming rather paranoid.
maybe even a bit obsessive.
but i breathe a sigh of relief as i type this because today - this very day - i prove to myself that such worry is absolutely un. unfounded and unwarranted . . .
we have these new cabinets, see, and last weekend hubbie put them in place while i enjoyed the beach and sunshine with my daughter, so putting the handles on seemed the least i could do - or at least offer to do - while he tears up installs the new kitchen faucet.
so i do.
offer, that is.
and he takes me up on my offer - in spite of the huge quantity of questions i ask and the inordinate number of tools i need but can’t find in his shop; in spite of the number of times he has to do the math of measuring for me - he still lets me attach the handles while he makes the seventh trip to the hardware store for Just The Thing (really, this time) he needs to put the sink back together.
here, my friends, is how i do it:
1. spread out pieces of the once-something-touches-me-i-won’t-let-it-go-till-i-have-to contact paper to catch runaway screws when i open new handle packaging.
2. overlap strips of contact paper for added security.
3. opt to place each plastic package in trash instead of letting them built up and throwing away at once. do a dry run both ways and find that it’s more exercise disposing of one package at a time.
4. fetch scissors and lay them in aesthetically inviting position on sticky contact paper. (scissors required for opening packaging because in my line of creative interests, fingernails get in the way.)
5. open step stool in anticipation of handling upper cabinet doors.
6. check phone to see if there’s a dial tone. for no particular reason other than it seems like a mighty good idea at the time.
7. weigh pros and cons of wearing shoes during this carpentry adventure. decide shoes might be a good thing to have on as there are likely to be splinters falling to the floor what with the drilling of holes and all.
8. make sure broom and dustpan haven’t been lost in move-around of late.
9. down one teensy little bite of caramel cake. for energy.
10. play around with positioning of the aforementioned handles, finding a place on the door where they (a) look right and (b) can be positioned without me having to resort to division and fractions and other tedious, tiring trivvle.
11. audition several pens, finally finding one that will leave a visible mark AND be easy to wipe off in the unlikely case i need to start over.
12. measure for the first hole no less than 19 times. i mean if measuring twice is the recommended number and this is my first handle-putting-on-adventure . . .
13. using the handy-dandy hole-starter-puncher thingie, i mark the (intended) position of the first screw.
14. discover that using one of those tape measurers that coils itself up into the striking-green-so-it’s-harder-to-lose casing is rather awkward because of that silver ledge at the end - you know, before the number 1. that thing sticks out making it impossible to lay the tape down flat on the surface, and when we’re dealing with (a) brand new cabinets and (b) 1/16 of an inch, every teensy little bit matters.
with that, it is time to drill the holes.
using the heavy big girl drill.
which i do.
eventually.
15. learn that it takes longer when you try to make a hole going into the wood with the drill in reverse.
16. stretch first handle to get it to reach the second/bottom screw.
17. figure out a way to make tape lay flat by using higher numbers on the tape so as to (hopefully) avoid this stretching step in the installation of future handles.
18. install second handle, refusing to give into the desire to put level across tops of first 2 handles to check for precision.
19. after 3 handles are attached, i shift into car-making mode, marking screw positions for each of the other doors, then drilling all the holes, then attaching handles.
20. hubbie returns with new-we-don’t-really-need-it-but-it-was-on-the-clearance-shelf-and-besides-who-knows-if-the-old-one-will-work-when-i-put-it-back-in disposal and (upon prodding) notes that the handles look “fine”.
so, 3 hours and 23 minutes after starting this project, i am done . . . except for that one handle that needs to go sideways, requiring an entirely different kind of math with fractions and such, so i decide to wait for hubbie (the engineer) on that one.
but that’s not all:
feeling confident and energetically on a roll, i decide to go outside and plant the new blue wave petunias we bought on the first trip to the hardware store this morning. being a master gardener, i feel it’s okay to ignore the published spacing requirements, opting instead to purchase one hanging basket per pot. not only does it make it quicker by only having to take one big galump out of the hanging basket and stick it in the waiting pot, the planting looks full and established from the get-go.
i fill the 3 pots on the upper deck, then tackle the windowbox, water everything, sweet the deck, put up the potting soil and shovel and trash bag. it wasn’t until the very moment i walk into the house and hear the cfussing from under the sink that i remember that hubbie turned the water off while he fiddles with kitchen sink.
good thing i have this aversion to touching germ-laden faucets and soap dispensers in public bathrooms, preferring instead to use those pre-packaged wet wipes.
while cleaning my hands with the rather aromatic pre-moistened wipes, i reflect back over today’s accomplishments and feel confidently ready to offer to help hubbie with the electrical stuff required to install the new disposal.
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Apr
18
heart-felt surprises
Filed Under Autoquiltography
monday past: while continuing work on operation clear-out, happened upon the only surviving piece of clothing i wore as a baby: a teensy little corduroy jacket. washed it, dried it, hung it up as delightful reminder that i was ever once that small and reliant.
tuesday past: obeying wake up thought to check decorative stitching on baby jacket, tingled with recognition that this very decorative stitching on yoke was what appears in internal image of stitching at ankles of autoquiltography one. looked at stitching through magnifying glass and noted a knot on the outside. then noted heart-shaped flowers and thrilled because my birthday = valentine’s day. then noted that there was no tag in jacket and smiled that this baby jacket was handmade by someone. just. for. me.
thursday: asked mother about it and discovered that she made the jacket and embellished it with heart-shaped flowers for her valentine girl. sketched out decorative stitching from jacket yoke, marveling at teensy little itty bitty stitches. began replicating on autoquiltography one. eventually resigned self to fact that i just cannot make stitches that small, so there will not be an exact replication. but what did i expect? glasses have adorned my face since first grade.
friday:
Technorati Tags:
cloth, quilt, sewing
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Apr
17
deep fried kefir
Filed Under Gifts received
still struggling with low to no energy, and still attribute it to allergies. no fun, but am hoping to be able to put it behind me soon thanks to the generosity of laney who sent me some kefir grains along with detailed instructions. (she’s so funny: said it was like getting a new pet!) here they look like cauliflower. oh, if i could just dip them in batter and fry them babies up. yum, yum.
oh if i had enough energy to do that.
thanks again, laney, for your caring words, heart, and acts.
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