My Mother Left This Life In November 2011
My mother, 2009 (photo by me)
I had this dream the week after my mother died -
She stands at the center of the living room, large open boxes and her twelve young children surrounding her. They know she’s sick. She knows she’s sick. They all know this moment is a gift. She’s beautiful and young. Her hair is dark. Her skin is pale and her face serious. She’s wearing a red knit dress. It hugs her and shows how frail she is. She reaches into a box and with a slender, weak arm she lifts an ornament and hangs it on the Christmas tree. Her children giggle and whisper their delight to each other, “Look at her, she’s up, she’s here.” They tuck their arms to their chests in self hugs and, in happy disbelief, they press their knuckles to their smiling lips. Implicit in each disposition, hers and theirs, is that she will soon be gone – this moment is a miracle. The children know this is their Christmas gift. Nothing could make them happier.
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She was their sun and their moon -
their north, their south, their east and their west.
She was the sparkle of light through a drop of morning dew.
She was the scent of ocean in the air, a “sea turn” she called it.
She was the refreshing first sip of her iced tea on a hot July day.
She was the twinkle of the Pleiades and all the stars of a dark night sky.
She was the mystery of the sun spots she recorded through her telescope.
She was the cool air on their bare legs as they ran through the yard.
She was the thrill of burning piles of just-raked fall leaves.
She was the heartbeat beneath their hand as a flag passed on Memorial Day.
She was the innocence of the Christ Child and faithful to the Savior Christ.
She was the old oak tree that now lives on without her.
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In the end, we lost our footing on a downhill run.
It came on fast, and though we tried to out-pace death, we landed in a heap, startled and dazed.
When we’d gathered ourselves, she was gone.
Our hearts are broken.
Mum and me, 1957 (photo by my father)
Quality Family Time – Second Time Around
A curious thing happened today. At about 4 p.m. I was trailed into the kitchen by my two young adult children. Though they have each lived away from home, for various reasons both are under my roof again for a time. Our home is large enough that we keep to our own spaces most of the time we are here together, and each prepares his/her own meals according to taste and schedule. So, unlike when they were young, it was a moment of note that we three had arrived in the kitchen at the same time.
But being together was natural enough that we just chatted not aware anything were amiss. After about ten minutes, when there was a lull in the conversation, my son asked, “Is anyone having trouble with the internet?” Simultaneously, my daughter and I said, “Yes!” And immediately we laughed, knowing that for each of us, the trip to the kitchen was a snack break while we suffered through the frustration of not being able to get online. We all realized, and verbalized, how sad it is that we have become this way!
Through the years when my children were young, our home had a large L-shaped kitchen. It seemed as if the rest of the house were superfluous, needed only for bathing and sleeping. I know we each thought of those times today as we recognized our current style of living. And how almost pathetic we said, that a blip in the internet service was the impetus for our togetherness moment.
Note to self: plan a family dinner soon, just like we used to have, every day, in the old days! Chicken nuggets, anyone?
Perception and Being
I’m reading four books right now – all non-fiction. As I think of it, this flurry of reading was preceded by two non-fiction books as well. I don’t always know what’s occurring in my mind as I choose books. Certainly, two of the books I’m reading have been inspired by my employment by a startup. As we posture and position and enter the launch phase, I have a desire to read about “buzz.” So, it’s not surprising that I returned to The Anatomy of Buzz, by Emanuel Rosen, which has recently been updated and is under the title, The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited. Since reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, the power of word-of-mouth fascinates me. More exactly, how humans have a need to share information fascinates me. Humans are a natural for social media. Our tools are just catching up with our tongues.
A co-worker suggested I try Rework, by Jason Fied and David Heinemeier Hansson. This fast-paced read challenges marketing strategies that have been the platform for modern business for decades. It’s a refreshing look at how ingenuity should be brought to market. I’m enjoying it.
Alongside these work related books, I’m reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard and Twelve Moons of the Year, by Hal Borland, both gifts from someone who appreciates my appreciation of nature. I hope soon to begin work on converting my nature photo blog, SilverLining, into a book. I’m reading these books to inspire that endeavor.
There’s not a grand point to this post. Actually, what got me thinking about writing it was a thought rooted in Annie Dillard’s writing, that I found myself mulling over as the sun set beyond the forest of trees that are out the windows that are across the room from where I sit at my desk. Writing the introduction to the post got me side-tracked about the books I’m reading.
So, here’s the thing I was thinking about. In the initial pages of her book, I think Annie Dillard is setting up the reader to be aware of visual perception, so that we are prepared as she shares her mentally challenging (to the reader) perceptions of the natural world. As an exercise to stretch our understanding of the brain’s interpretation of sight and depth perception, she tells about the first life-long blind patients of cataract surgery and their initial reactions to having sight. In more than one instance, the newly seeing patient describes vision as blotches of color – the implication being there is not yet meaning in what the blotches are. Equally interesting is the expressed idea of these patients that the color is immediately before them – there is no distance between them and the “colors” – which are objects known to life-long seeing people. So the net effect was that when these people walked, they perceived the colors as parting, as giving way to their passage – kind of like the way we displace water when we swim through it.
Anyway, my random thought that caused me to post today, was that I found myself sitting here picturing myself passing through the palette of colors before me - across the room and out the wall of glass, and over the deck and into the air that leads to the woods and on toward the setting sun, all without bumping into anything, as if molecules could absorb my being and carry me through and into the infinite sunset. This was the perception of the once blind - the perception, as Annie points out, of every newborn. I believe she challenges us to consider if we construct our own constraints.
A Slant of Light
2010 – a long year,
unraveling twenty-six
that ended on the 13th
in December
The afternoon sun came in low through a window and illuminated and made shadows on a wall of objects on a chest in a corner. Christmas decorations sat in temporary place while the chest itself and a lamp and three framed paintings held the scene’s unchanging structure. Through the lens lines were aligned and varied positions were tried to use the light before it faded and the shadows were lost. Four good pictures were stored on the disc. The urgency of the moment passed and the sun faded.
What of these things, when looked at later, became more than the photos themselves? What realization made the images more than the light or the shadows or the objects or the final arrangement of the colored pixels?
He would take the chest – it was his uncle’s – and one-half of the Christmas decorations. She’d keep the paintings – done by her mother – and the lamp. The walls would be sold. All the walls would be sold, and the doors and the windows, and the upstairs and the downstairs. The profit, or loss, would be split – 50/50.
What had happened? What made it unravel? A twist of fate? Or a slant of light?
The Moon and Fun
You know how people send all sorts of inspirational emails to you? The kind of emails that are circulating to the masses and are meant to inspire or inform or put the fear of God in you or fill your heart with love? Also, often when you get them they have been forwarded so many times the format of the page is a mess or you have to scroll through about three screens worth of address groups to get to the actual message?
For the record, I almost never forward those emails. And, if I do, to protect my family and friends from viruses, I copy and paste the body of the message into a new email.
Today, I have received a link in an email from a friend – my preferred way to receive these unsolicited but informative emails. And the post that the link took me to is so delightfully awesome, I am bypassing the email method of spreading the charm, and blogging about it.
It will take you no more than a minute to enjoy this link.
Here’s what it says to me –
Humans are fun by nature. We forget to have fun. We forget how to have fun.
This is fun – enjoy!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/11/04/131063948/moon
(Scroll through all eleven images, which follow the brief text.)
Fall Festival – Ashfield, Mass.
- Pumpkins in Ashfield, Mass.
I went to the Ashfield Fall Festival in Massachusetts this weekend. It was a symphony of color, light, people, and music. The weather was fall perfect. I think that, for me, it was more about the mood, the ambience, than anything else. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. Here are 17,000 words worth of pictures I took at the festival.
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Thanks for a wonderful time, Ashfield.Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Into My Home
Ladybug
I’ve mentioned in this blog lots of times that I write a photo blog about a pond near my house. I love the blog. It’s called SilverLining because it’s been the silver lining in my life for more than three years now.
Once a day, at least, I get up from my desk and I head out the door with my Nikon D40. I walk about a sixty paces and I’m at a small pond where, for three and a half years as I walk around it through all seasons, I’ve become far better acquainted with nature than ever before in my life. Sometimes I wonder if I had the same wonder for the natural world in my childhood, the toddler years. I think it’s likely. I was outside most of the day and most of the time was spent exploring the fields and woods around my house.
I’m not a professional photographer. In fact I know very little about my camera and picture-taking. I just do my best to get good focus, I pray for good lighting, and I let nature show itself to me. The photo above, which I took just yesterday, is no prize winner, but it’s awfully sweet!
Last night as I sat working at my computer, a bug like the one above (did in come into the house with me?), flew onto my computer screen. I was so happy! At long last one of my outdoor pals came in to see me and to have a good look at my world! For half an hour or more it crawled all around my screen and the frame of the computer.
It spent a good deal of time studying the latch. In fact it crawled inside it.
And it did a little exploring at the highest point. See how cleverly I’ve cropped the next shot…!? (Lower left corner…)
And below, my visitor unwittingly causes a great plug for the client whose site I was working on!
For the naturalists among you, I believe (I always use that qualifier as I’m no more a naturalist than I am a photographer) that this is a Convergent Ladybug.
Happy weekend.
Happy 4th of July Weekend
Happy 4th
For the past few days, each time I think about this 4th of July weekend, I shortly after realize that, quietly in my mind, I’m humming “Auld Lang Syne.” If you were to ask me what celebratory event does that tune align with, I’d say, “New Year’s Eve.” So, h0w it had attached itself to this 4th of July weekend had puzzled me.
But after some reflection, I’ve decided that the lyrics and tune are nostalgic. And the 4th of July is a nostalgic time for me since, in my childhood years, it was a thrilling, daring, adventurous, and thoroughly American event. And it was the only time each year that I ate cotton-candy.
With free rein, my parents allowed my siblings and me to walk back and forth the quarter-mile to the “old center” in my home town of 7000 people where a parade, rides, games, popcorn, cotton-candy, fireworks, and a flatbed truck with a variety of variety shows, were a fantastical playground for three days and nights.
Rex Trailer , and his side-kick Pablo, was a guest one year. With his six-shooter he shot a fly off the top of a tree 300 feet away. He asked us kids if we could see the fly. I know I could.
At some point through the celebration nearly every kid was carrying a stick with an American flag at the end of it, like the one in the photo above. Red, white, and blue pinwheels were your prize for a good score at a shooting booth. And every kid’s bike was decorated with patriotic streamers at the end of the handle bars or ribbons woven through the spokes.
Firecrackers were going off endlessly. I think I only once held a firecracker as it was lit. It was terrifying to me. But my older brothers lived in a world that held my vicarious interest as there was hushed talk about who among them had a cherry bomb or who within their circle of friends had, or heard of someone who had, or heard of someone who heard of someone who had, an M80. My father’s warnings against any involvement with fireworks seemed only to entice, as he displayed the scars on the tips of his index fingers – green dots a quarter of an inch in diameter – from his youthful adventures with firecrackers. What kid isn’t in awe of a scar.
All through the weekend there was a hype, an eagerness to live fully, to experience everything as many times as possible. I’d be muscle weary from the walk up and down the hill between the festivities and my house (where my mother’s refreshing iced tea poured like water), and from the games and rides that challenged my muscles like no other time in the year. And I’d have a stomach ache from the popcorn and candy, the cotton candy especially, which I ate as many times a day as I could afford to.
My money resources came from an annual event in my home. A few weeks before “the 4th,” my father would announce that he’d pay five cents for every dandelion plant – root included – that we dug up from our yard. As the yard was large, this was an open invitation to accumulate all the money you needed for the upcoming weekend. So with brown bag in hand, out the door we’d go with a kitchen spoon as the removal tool. My mother would count our dandelions and keep a tally that she’d give to my father. Our pay came in quarters. It was the only time of year throughout my early childhood, when I had a fistful of quarters. To this day, I dream about the playground where the 4th of July celebration was held. In the dream, I slide down the slide and as my feet kick up dirt where I land, there are hundreds of quarters.
The 4th of July is a celebration of the United State’s independence from Britain. But for me, the day also now has a fondness - a sweet memory - of family, hometown, and an America that still had a bit of innocence remaining.
Happy 4th.
Hi Guys – and that means you ladies, too
There’s a new thing going on socially, and I decided over dinner Saturday night that I don’t like it. If Miss Manners is still Miss Mannering, I invite her to chime in.
For the past year, I have noticed that wait staff in restaurants refer to me and my dining guests as “you guys.”
“You guys all set?”
“You guys want more water?”
“You guys want to see the dessert menu?”
…and the final straw this weekend, “You guys like that bottle of wine?”
I try to be cool about changing with the times. And I think I’m doing alright. I’m a little behind in the world of who’s who in Hollywood. I pick up an issue of People in my hair salon, and I know…sadly…really…about one third of the people being talked about. Maybe a smidgen more, but not much more.
And to ballpark my age for you guys, the one magazine cover on the news stands right now that really has my attention and might cause me to actually purchase the magazine is Vanity Fair, with a stunning picture of Liz Taylor (the Liz Taylor I remember) and a tempting headline about “the truth behind Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ ” – or something like that. Both LT and MJ (who, come to think of it were pals…) were part of the culture of my formative years. I look at the covers of the other magazines and I have no idea who I’m looking at. Part of my ignorance comes from never watching T.V., but some of my cluelessness comes from my age.
I’m not so old that I never said to my friends – guys and girls – “What are you guys up to tonight?” But that’s where the expression stayed — in the youthful, casual, social scene. How this expression has followed me and is being echoed from the past over candlelight and fine wine is beyond me.
I think my face shows a daft expression whenever I hear “you guys” from the wait staff. I’m perplexed, I’m dumbfounded, and I’m trying to do the math for an 18%, 16%, 14% tip, each time it’s repeated.
But in the end, I leave the 20% and just bite my tongue as I hear, “You guys come back again!”
A New Year Takes Shape
Great Blue Heron
As the initial days of 2012 unfold, I’m taking stock of my creative energies and devoting time to marketing my writing and photography.
I’ve established a site at Fine Art America where my photos are available in various canvas and framed options. I’m really excited about this venue! Already I’ve had viewers from across the U.S. and around the world!
Stop by the FAA sometime and see all the amazing work by an array of talented folks!
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