handstories

moon blue

    Almost five am.  Woke up over an hour ago.  Just before Blue's alarm went off.  An early flight for him.  K. is dropping him off at the airport right now.   Gone until Christmas.  Back to Ohio, for his senior year.  One more year and then who knows? 

        This piece was the last two days.  The moon was unexpected.

    There was actually the start of a star, first traced in soap, and then outline basted in orange thread.  After a bunch of pale blue thread beads were in, it just seemed wrong.  The moon called.

    But really, it's all about the blue, and Blue.

we do what we can

    (This is the story of the best stitching I did all week.)

    Teenage Moon asked if I could mend the knee of his jeans.  I was wary, because he likes things "just so," and because things have been strained between us lately, but very happy that he was asking (especially pleased because he had just informed me that his girlfriend can sew, but still wanted me to do it).

    I asked him if he wanted the mend to be the same color as his gray jeans, or contrasting?

        "What do you mean?"

    "A gray patch, or something very different for fun?  Like lime green?"

    Shocked at the idea, he said, "When you said contrasting, I thought you meant a black patch instead of gray."

    "Gray it is."

    So I patched in gray.  It's not perfect, but it looks good enough from a normal distance.  While finishing, I wondered if some mama love could be stitched into it, a spell for harmony and care?  Pulling out a lime green thread from the basket, and using Jude's invisible basting stitch, I put an "X" across his knee.  

    "He'll never know," I thought, "but I will."

    I put them over the back of his chair at the table.  When he came home that night, he yelled out a thanks, and then brought them into the kitchen where I was making dinner.

            "I see the lime green thread."  (Did I mention he likes things "just so" and has a great eye for details?)  Fortunately, he thought it was funny.

    "Turn them inside out," I said.  He did, and saw the "X".  "It's a kiss from your mama, some mama love for you and your knee!"

    He rolled his eyes and left the room, but there was a smile

    Heading out the door this morning, in the repaired pants, I called out, "Are you feeling the love?!"

        "Sure."

    "You mean, "Thanks, Mom, I love you, too!"?

        "Sure, bye."  (Which is Teenager for exactly that, right?)

returning & gifts

    The "Love Can Mend" pennant is back from being a part of Mo's powerful installation of love, "I Dream of a World Where Love is the Answer".  Mo's vision, talents and magic gathered together love and hope from around the world.  I wish I could have been in that room and have been surrounded by the energy of it all.

        There is some weariness going on here, just as there was in the making this, and remembering what I wrote, back in November, when sending it off to Mo, "...maybe this is how it really is.  This work and struggle for peace, healing the earth, trying to find a way through-  It doesn't usually happen because everything is a calm and hunky-dory garden of sweet peas and roses.  The ripped and rough places show us what's really going on, and call to us for mending.  For most of us, we do what we can with what we have.  Piecing together whatever kind of inner scraps we might have within.  And just maybe, all of the frayed worn bits can be brought together and worked into a kind of wholeness again."  

    While I'm sad that the gathering is over, it's been good to have it back, as a reminder that there is love and beauty in mending.

    Mo's generosity continued with the added gifts of one of her brilliant stars, bit of blue and a cloud of wedding cloth (I see some sails in there...).  And while wrapping the ties in the tree for photos, there was a sudden movement to the left, turning my head, there was a hummingbird mid-air,  eye-level, within arms reach.  We looked at each other for a split second before it zipped away, another gift.

    A heart-deep thank you to Mo and the Gathering, oxo.

home building

    Home has been on my mind a lot.  What it is, what makes one, what stays with us.

    This roller coaster called parenting... it's exhausting.  We want babies, imagine toddlers and grade schoolers, but why is little consideration given for the teen years when deciding to get on this ride?  

    This was one of those weeks.  The kind that leaves you feeling completely out of control, with your hands in the air, saying, "I have no idea, and may not even care anymore."  (He'd probably say the same.)

    Friday afternoon, with K. out of town, Moon came home from school only to head out as fast as possible to spend the evening with his girlfriend.  

    "Sit down for a minute, I haven't seen you all day..."  He wouldn't, said he couldn't, she was waiting, and he couldn't wait to get to her.

    "Be home by ten," I sighed.

        "I will...give or take," he said while sticking in his earphones and closing the door.

    Conversations have become tug-o-wars.    But then, he came home at 9:58!  Sat down, and began asking questions about love...  We talked for an hour.  I said some really smart things that I didn't even know I knew.  

    Over his shoulder, heading out of the room on his way to bed, I got an "I love you, too."

    I'm thinking that it's these lovely little scraps that hold it all together.

the strength of fragility

    I've been slowly listening to the Mary Oliver interview on On Being, backing up and re-playing parts, with a growing love for her strength and ability to focus on joy.

    This morning, listening and stitching, I heard her poem "Fourth Sign of the Zodiac" for the first time.  It was just after choosing the thread to echo and continue the few floating blue petals in the orange middle ring cloth around the sun.  How she saw and knew things most of us miss...

    This is part four...

4.
Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,
all the fragile blue flowers in bloom
in the shrubs in the yard next door had
tumbled from the shrubs and lay
wrinkled and fading in the grass. But
this morning the shrubs were full of
the blue flowers again. There wasn’t
a single one on the grass. How, I
wondered, did they roll back up to
the branches, that fiercely wanting,
as we all do, just a little more
life.

– from Blue Horses by Mary Oliver, published by Penguin Press, 2014.

the day after.

    My dad died yesterday. He never liked Christmas.

    He’s not been well for a long time, so not unexpected, but the end was much faster than we imagined.  He’d been in the hospital since last Wednesday, struggling to breathe.  At first, we thought for a few days, like all of the other times.  Each day it changed...He'll be home on Wednesday... On Wednesday with 24 care... On Wednesday with care and hospice...“Could be two days or two years.”

    All day Christmas Eve I thought about a Christmas forty years ago…

    Standing in the kitchen, putting paper napkins into the mushroom shaped napkin holder we kids had given my mom. The phone rang. Dad answered, with the knife he’d been sharpening in his hand. His uncle had died. A father figure to him. He burst into sobs, threw his knife down on the counter, and ran from the room.  It was the first of the two times I ever saw him cry.  Startled, I dropped, and broke the napkin holder. The knife bounced into the aquarium on the counter, cracking it. Water began to pour out of the broken glass. I could hear Mom and Dad crying in their bedroom. Grabbing bowls, I scooped water and fish as fast as I could, and towels to mop the counter. 

    A text from my brother in the evening said that he was finally comfortable, and sleeping.

    I stayed up too late. K. asked why?  “Because tomorrow my dad might die. I want to stay in today.”

    Christmas morning, my brother called at 11:30. Dad was unresponsive and his body was shutting down. It could take an hour, a day, or two.  I decided to go to Oregon, to see him, to say goodbye, to see his hands one more time.

    At 12:15 I got in the car. Five minutes later, a mile from home, I pulled over to the side of the road to answer my brother's next call.  Dad was gone.  I burst into sobs, and then drove home.  Listening to Johnny Cash, we watched an old movie of him fishing, his favorite thing in the world, catching salmon.

    Ours was a broken story, he had no idea who I am, and I'm so much like him.  It was complicated, and not.

    Still…He was my dad, and I loved him.

winter light wishes

    Taking a few moments for stitching and sending thoughts of peace and light to you all!

    With love, Hazel

love can mend

    When Mo sent out an invitation to join in the making of her installation "I Dream of a World Where Love is the Answer," I had visions of a little boat on a calm sea under twinkling starlight, all being peacefully stitched on lovely summer days.

    Well, none of that happened.

   Giving up on the idea of making it with a peaceful spirit, it was dipped into the fading indigo vat.  After washing it, I started to iron it, and before I realized what was happening, there were holes melted into it.  At first there was panic, but then Mo's phrase "our beautiful broken world" came to mind, and it began to take shape.

   An earth of scraps and stitch was made. followed by a golden moon with the warm sun below, a few patches of deep space and starlight, and a scattering of stars across it all.

    And while making, there was thinking, confusion, and a wondering if... maybe this is how it really is.  This work and struggle for peace, healing the earth, trying to find a way through-  It doesn't usually happen because everything is a calm and hunky-dory garden of sweet peas and roses.  The ripped and rough places show us what's really going on, and call to us for mending.  For most of us, we do what we can with what we have.  Piecing together whatever kind of inner scraps we might have within.  And just maybe, all of the frayed worn bits can be brought together and worked into a kind of wholeness again.

    With a heart full of gratitude for Mo's vision and spirit, I'm sending wishes and prayers for, and into, the bigness of the Universe and our own small wished for cosmoses within it... May they all be patched and held together with our threads of hope and love. 

a break

    Sorting some things out.  Hope to be back soon.

 

    For all of us... 

    Beannacht/Blessing by John O'Donohue

    On the day when
    the weight deadens
    on your shoulders
    and you stumble,
    may the clay dance
    to balance you.
    And when your eyes
    freeze behind
    the grey window
    and the ghost of loss
    gets in to you,
    may a flock of colours,
    indigo, red, green,
    and azure blue
    come to awaken in you
    a meadow of delight.

    When the canvas frays
    in the currach of thought
    and a stain of ocean
    blackens beneath you,
    may there come across the waters
    a path of yellow moonlight
    to bring you safely home.

    May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
    may the clarity of light be yours,
    may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
    may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
    And so may a slow
    wind work these words
    of love around you,
    an invisible cloak
    to mind your life.

glittering moons

    I love glitter.  This surprises folks.  (I suppose it might be due to the jeans, gray t-shirt, pony-tail and tennis shoes I wear most days.)  The sparkle of it just delights me... teeny-tiny glints of light.

    Yesterday I was quite giddy over some glitter paint the teacher had given the students.  She commented, "It's so weird how much you like it!"  One of the teachers I worked with last year wandered in as I was going on about it, and recounted the time when I had brought some in to add to the kids' posters.  (Funny, she didn't tell the story with fondness, but rather with exasperation...) 

    Back in the 90's, Janie and I shared a classroom and a love of all things glittery (among many other things).  We each had a container of body glitter for our shoulders, temples, etc.  "Everything's better with glitter!" we would say.  The teacher of the classroom across the way from us felt quite the opposite.  On days that we had the sparkly stuff in action she would come no further than the doorway to talk to us, so as not to track it back into her classroom.

    So, here I am trying to give the illusion of glitter with tiny colorful stitches to these moons.  You need to get really close to see them, but they're there, making me happy!