handstories

singing to myself

    This is turning into a wild ride.  Pushing through the unknown, creating connections, intersections, and responding along the way.  A bunch of unstitching happened, and I loved the flashes that led to them.  When the ways through showed themselves- light bulb moments.  There has been lots of "what if-ing"...in how the moon garden might grow, and where that wandering black line might go.  And many sudden knowings- the jar, a rainbow star, and today the name..."Soul Song".

    Days are flying by.  This year I'm especially loving the kindergarten and first graders.  There is a child or two in each of the classes that usually does better with extra attention.  I sit with them, we draw, paint, talk about Frida Kahlo, owls, rainbows, etc.  There is encouraging, managing, and a grabbing of wayward paint brushes as needed.  Some days it feels like a three-ring circus, it always feels like a whirlwind, often with lots to laugh about afterwards.

    It's all connected- why I work with children, this and other cloths, the past, now, and the going...  It's all part of the same story.  I can't quite sort it all out yet, but it feels like it's coming.

illumination

    A moonlit garden and a jar of memories of hope are in the works.  (The roots of the garden is a pretty patch gift from Jude.)

    This piece is filling up, and happily not with the darkness that was expected, instead a whole lot of light is pouring in.

(And last night's dream...visiting a friend's house (that I've never met), going to a baseball game with her, where I caught ball after ball, until I was balancing an armload of baseballs, while still catching ball after ball...)

places between here and there

    Working my way around the cloth,

    basting on a rainbow of scraps,  

    using the leftover basting threads to stitch the hair.

    A kind of connection between cloth and child,  

    a way of holding things that are and might be.

    And trying to get a feel of how to add magic and imagination,

    things that can help to see the possibilities-

    of pathways and transformation,

    and allow for doorways of dreaming and wanting.

sometimes things create themselves

    It was started on that day last week (here), feeling a bit melancholy about the end of the year and those children who need so much care, but are often left without it during the summer months, and wondering about that very sad girl. (I've since found out that there are people who know her story and are giving her help and support.) 

    It started out as another mat.  Thinking about how much I loved the stitching and result of the first one.  The plan was to stitch scraps around the edge, colorful pieces- a simple colorful cloth . . . and maybe to put it in the shop?

 

    It wasn't until making that first post, while adding the photos in, that I saw the figure at the side.   Those random scraps that had been tacked down just became a child on their own.  What a surprise, but not.  A manifestation . . . a material-ization (ha!).  It was then that it was clear what and where this cloth was meant for.  Wendy's work.  (Read about it here, here & here).  Not meant for self, or shop . . . but for comfort, connection and hope.  I'm excited to see where it might go . . . 

waving and wanting

 

    I could use a bottle of sea in my pocket.  One that if I put my eye or ear to the opening, waves could be seen, and the sound of their crashing and easing into the sand would be caught.  I'm tired, mostly because it's that time of year, and I'm ready for a break (as are the children!)  Some of it's because next year is unknown, which is nothing new in this position, but I've asked for a change, which is not how I do things.  

    Lines from a Stevie Smith poem keep running through my head,     

            "…I was much too far out all my life   

                And not waving but drowning."

 

     Over the last few years I have learned to trust more.  Trust that things will work out, go as they should, be ok . . . in cloth, work, life.

    Now I'm working on the idea of wanting.  I'm not one for making plans for myself.  Daydreams and wishing now and then, but nothing clear or focused.  I'm very good at wanting for others and fighting to make it happen for them, but not for me.

    Some of it is from the trusting, because things do generally work out, one way or another, so, no need to worry, but a piece of it is from not feeling deserving.  Who am I to ask for something?  There are years of therapy and explorations of self and childhood that help it all to make sense, but still, how do you learn to think in different ways?

    So, all to say, I'm very uncomfortable and quite jammed up, but I'm not drowning.  I am learning how to wave- to the universe and myself.

defining space

    Blue is home for the summer.  He was ready to come home and rest, and we are all so glad to have him here with us, but there is a need for some wiggling around and re-learning how to work and fit together again in this small house.

    He's also grown some new wings of freedom while at college this year.  Trying not to clip them, but really I just want to tie him to a chair and make him tell me everything about his new world.

    Instead, I'm watching and waiting for sightings of him, being grateful for whatever scraps of stories he offers up on his way out to see friends (and trying not to scream every time I go into the bathroom and am reminded that he has spent the last year living with other teenage boys).

    Sometimes I wonder if I'm looking in at my life, or out from it.

    Started here with another one of Jude's moons.

what time & space held

    What a full weekend- A dinner date with a friend, that was just the right thing to ease some of the stress that has been building over the last couple of weeks.  A long caring, moving phone call with someone whose gifts let her see and share so much (and best of all, of her words, "When you are moved, you are believing, and it's true.  Trust what moves you.").  A  day with a dearest friend, traveling to visit another beloved soul.  Hours of talking and talking and laughing (followed by a lovely dream that magnified her quiet steady comfort).  And some stitching.  The guys have been missed, but having these days has been good.  Time and space with Self.  

    These squares are from the muslin dipped in the indigo bucket last summer.   I started stitching them Friday night, thinking about how things can be rearranged into something new.  Cloth and Self.  How things can look quite different without really changing.  

    And how to build on that.  

    I don't really have the words yet for it all, but there is bubbling.  Maybe there aren't words?  

    And remembering a painting I made a couple of years ago,  titled, "What if things were different than she thought?" (here).  And I began a new piece with thoughts of, "What if things were everything she hoped?"

    I am paying attention, and it is hard to let myself focus, but I am owning that I am moved in this process of trying.  Moved by self & Self.  I feel it.  So, it must be true.

    There is a lot more stitching to do.

continuing my mid-life metamorphosis . . .

    "What kind of blue do you want?"

    I told her, "Deep dark blue, and twilight, mermaids, and the sea . . ."

homecoming- some of the story

   There are moments of centeredness, of being filled with the knowing that all is well, and as it should be.  Today held one of them . . .  

    It is a fine enough name, and I've known wonderful strong women named "Cindy," but it has never fit me, no matter how I've tugged, it wasn't enough.  It brings a wincing feeling of disappointment and misrepresentation.  It wasn't a name that was carefully chosen for me (They really expected their first born to come on my dad's birthday, and to be a boy.  I came a day late and a penis short, and there the troubles began…), and being that it was Cindy, not Cynthia, made for additional issues.  "No, it's not a nickname.  Yes, it is my legal name.  Yes, I know my own name."  There's more to it, but all to say, it's been like wearing an ill fitting hand-me-down, that has grown more uncomfortable with time.

    For the last decade or so, I haven't even allowed K. to use it.  When he would slip, I'd shout, "That's not my name!"  "What is it then?"  "I don't know, but it's not that!"  

    My sister tells me that I have been talking about Hazel for many years.  I know that I have always had a deep fondness for it . . . it's solidness, thoughts of trees, storybook characters, the color of my eyes, and what's not to love about getting to write a cursive lower case "z"!  

    A close few have been using it for the last couple of years, but changing it out in the world seemed like a lot of work, and that it would be asking too much of others. Until a month ago, just before my birthday, I mentioned the name to a colleague, "You are so a Hazel!" she exclaimed.  And later to an acquaintance, "It suits you so much better!"  I knew that it was true, and that it was time to claim myself.

    So, today, at the courthouse, on my lucky 13th day of the month, a judge made it legal.  

    I feel I've come home to myself.

“The big Mystery of Healing”

 (photo by Wendy Golden-Levitt)

    The very best thing I received on my birthday was an email from Wendy Golden-Levitt (The therapist I sent this cloth to for use in her work with children. Do read more about her textile therapy work here, here, & here). Wendy shared that a girl had taken it for a ride in the sand tray, and had included the poem the she had created as part of her healing process.

        Wendy also wrote, "When I work in the studio, with children and textiles….it is truly a community effort. The therapy facilitated by me, the child, and the cloth…a group of three really.  Without all three working together it is a very different story . . . And when all is working together, the big Mystery of Healing presents itself…and there is movement from conscious suffering to a  life filled with meaning. The experience of V working with your cloth was the beginning of creating a new vital personal myth, challenging the energy of the orphan and wounded child archetypes. V’s relationship to your cloth, allowed for her expression of loss and abandonment to flow through her sand tray, movement and poetry. Thus having the possibility of not identifying with those archetypes, but allowing for new energy to be experienced and valued." 

    The poem and Wendy's thoughts speak to everything I had hoped for while stitching the cloth.  I am still working to hold the ALL of it . . . how this young girl, in another part of the world-saw, felt, knew what was in the cloth, and was able to give out so much of herself in her words and expressions. And there is also the awe and pain from the recognition of feelings that come from sharing like-experiences.

    With permission from Wendy and V., who said it would be “good” to share it, here is V.'s poem:

"it don’t matter

where i dive

from the boat

she made for us kids who come here needing

heart transplants and brain transplants in a therapy way.

that boat already got some shiny things that made me smile.

i love the birds free and happy on the sails.

and the sparkle button treasures in the boat. i love that!!!!!!

put another ten!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!

it’s like a secret that is a good secret

that just makes you so happy and feel so safe.

i'm glad she made a moon , i need this cloth in my mind day and night.

see those swooshes coming out into the sky. that would be my wishes to feel good again.

i think she made this cloth

to make me not so alone.

i get alone feelings like a boat bouncing around in the ocean.

but this boat is so beautiful. i could be this boat instead of a row boat in the dark.

i love her. i feel i love her.

not marry her. but love her, right?

don’t you feel it? love? in her whole cloth?

is she married to the lady who made the magic feather cloth?

they love me don’t they?

the end.

until i go in that boat again.

don’t let any one spit on it please.

the end.

again."

-V.

    I have a heart full of love and gladness . . . for V., for Wendy and this work she does, for being able to play a small part in it, for the surprising gift of some personal healing the making and sharing of this cloth has brought, for Jude, who introduced us to Wendy, and created such a meaningful community that I'm very happy to be a part of.  ox