handstories

Comforts of home

"The Wonderland of Home"

    Sometimes, while working on a piece, I scribble down thoughts.  "Home, moon, window, making, light, heart, shine, through lines, woven, tending, care... where is home, there is home, home stories, homemaker, maker of home..." were the words that came while stitching this cloth.  There was a lot of joy in the making of this one.

   

    Home has been even more of a comforting space lately.  K and I are settling into new routines now that it's just the two of us again.  Memories of our first fifteen years without kids float around.  There is so much less to do for just the two of us, except the chores.  Although, there is a lot less to clean without two boys coming and going.  We've been divvying up the jobs that first Blue, and now Moon have left behind.  I was embarrassed to discover that I didn't know how to work the vacuum!  In my defense, Blue and Moon have done the weekly vacuuming for the last decade or so, and I do sweep.  Confessing my homemaker deficiency to K, and adding that I hate vacuuming (lugging the contraption from the basement stairs, the noise, the hassle of changing the attachments, etc.), I was thrilled when he said that he enjoyed it!  Hallelujah!  I have willingly taken over the litter box instead.

    And today, a new boat beginning.  I always come back to them.  They're a comfort, too.  A kind of centering and symbol of going.  A reminder of who I am, or might be.

trying to think in pictures and words

    This is the third attempt at a post.  First I wrote a gruesome memory involving twins, a bicycle and a big toe.  And then a sappy meandering through hill thoughts.  Try, try, again...

    My friend's recovery from surgery has been slow and bunny-hopping with setbacks.  I drive across the bridge every few days (which has been its own adventure), and stay with her for some hours while her partner tends to other parts of their lives.  Each time I pack a bag- stitching, notebook, novel, magazine (in case I can't concentrate at all).  Rarely does any of it come out of the bag.  We talk and talk, as she rests in bed- about selves, family, people we know, my parenting, her upcoming wedding, Maya Angelou, memories of first grade reading groups... anything and everything.

    Another pink hill.  I still don't know why they are in my head and heart.  Fairytale like and full of childhood memories, maybe?  Why the "and..."?  The lines in the fabric invited a word to be written.  There was an "and" discussion this week, how it's much kinder than "but...".  It's true, and it will take some practice.  And it makes me think of storytelling... "and then...".

    And now I'm going to go pack up my bag again, and head over the bridge, to tell some more stories about who knows what...

sunshine & stitches

    Seattle is beautiful right now.  My eyes are very grateful for the bright sunshining days to stitch in.  On the way to school, the lake sparkles in the morning light with Mt. Rainier majestic in the distance.  Walking in the arboretum, I keep stopping to admire the pretty Magnolia blossoms and cherry trees that line the paths.  There were also two ravens calling and flying in the tree tops the other day, the first time I've seen them here.
         Some pieces are getting ready for a shop update tomorrow.  The finishing process has become a ritual that I really love.  A quick loose sketch is made of each cloth with a few words or thoughts about it.  One by one, I hold them, feeling and listening for story, until it all comes together...

moon & bad haiku

    Not a lot of words, here or at home.  The writing homework did not get done, instead I stared out the window for an hour, because there is nothing to say.  Blue leaves on Friday to return for his sophomore year far away in Ohio.  Moon starts high school in two weeks.  Time is passing.

    Here are some old words:

    Once in a college poetry class, told to write a haiku, I wrote:

        In a spider's eye

        the big of man and moon

        is not so pretty

    Ten years earlier, in sixth grade, the first time I was made to write a haiku (which at the time I thought was crazy, because I had been writing page-long, wordy, pre-teen angst filled ballads, and could not possibly limit myself to seventeen words), I wrote:

        Five in the first line

        Seven in the second, please

        Five in the last line

    Mrs. Young was not pleased, but I made a fuss until she put it on the wall next to those more acceptable creations written by the rest of the class.        "Moondala"

golly-gee-willikers

    I am known to say that, a lot.  Usually after hearing a student say some other choice word at school.

    "You meant to say golly-gee-willikers, right?"  This is usually met with a puzzled look.  

    "Or did you mean golly-gee-whiz?"  

        "Huh?"

    "They are both fine choices, and very appropriate for school.  And you should probably save that other word for when you really need it."  By this time they've usually got the message.

    My Iowa friend always says that, to save the strong words for when you need them.  Don't use them up, or they'll lose their meaning.  "Just keep them up on a shelf, at the ready."  She then goes on to tell the story of being at school one evening with a bunch of kids, when a young man tried breaking into the building.  She let those stored up words fly and scared him off!

    I'm going with a couple of friends to visit her for the day.  It's sure to be loads of laughs and very good company.  I'll take along a little stitching for the backseat.  

    Also, there's a shop update planned for Sunday afternoon. (Sunshine for photos willing.)

dodging self

    Thoughts are bouncing around, they won't hold still.  Rotating through these cloths, with the circle growing wider each day.  Trying to write an artist's statement.  Trying.  You would think, being a person who loves words and stories, that it would come easily.  You would be wrong.

swell

    Last week was happily filled with small cloth stitching.  There weren't enough minutes in the days to join all of the scraps and threads of ideas that were bubbling up.  Then came a pause, and a need to slow and just make without thought or rush of excitement.  So, yesterday and today were spent with this restful knitting, another Portland Pullover.  The only thought weaving through was, "This is just swell."  

    And I thought about "swell," a word I use lots, without thinking. A word with so many meanings:  The rhythm of the sea as the waves rise and fall, that moment in really wonderful music that takes you to a brink, to grow, really big feelings that fill you up, things being fine & dandy . . .

    Really, 'swell' is truly swell, and how things go, and are. 

nonplussed janxting

    

    Standing in the school library, watching a group of students behave very un-library-like (this after one of them muttered a word at me that I did not know, but was pretty sure of the sentiment behind it), the librarian said to me, "You look very nonplussed."

    I didn't know what that meant either.
        "nonplussed:  a state of utter perplexity."

    Exactly.

    P.S.  I just looked up the word he used in the urban dictionary.

    "Janxt is a word that can be used to describe anything, especially when you can't find a word to otherwise describe it. Popular also as a swear word when swearing is prohibited or just inappropriate."

    Hmmm . . . gold star to him for keeping it appropriate.  I may have to borrow this one.

 

round & round she goes

    Circling the two classrooms today, working with students on their reports on the mimic octopus or springbok gazelle (both are fascinating creatures that have myriad ways of protecting themselves from predators, by the way), I was struck again by how environment can account for so much of our skill set.  Reading their sentences back to them, hoping they could hear what words were missing, or what grammar changes might be needed, finding that many of them couldn't.  If you don't hear words being used in the "standard" way in your world, how can you know?  And is it fair to expect them to?  But there's also the knowing that people are judged by the way they talk and write.  

    I grew up in a family without a lot of formal education, dyslexia, and its own culture, among other things.  You might "communicate" to work, rather than "commute," picnics were "pic-a-nics".  We were fine enough, all of us smart in our own ways, I didn't think about it much.  Until going out in the world.  College friends would comment after I returned from time back home, "I can tell you've been hanging out with your family," and once I was told I had "the most idiosyncratic way of speaking" he had ever heard.  (I had to go home and look it up to know whether it was a good thing or not.  Still not sure.)  And I will never ever remember whether I am lying, laying or laid out on the bed, so I try to avoid those words all together.

    All to say, that I still don't know how best to work with these kids.  How to support their growth, offer them tools that will give them more choices, but not to make them feel "wrong" when there is such a wide gap for them to straddle?

Later:  P.S.  I just remembered I forgot to "edit" & "spellcheck" & discovered I had the wrong word up there.  It is now corrected to "idiosyncratic".  Geesh, the word-work never ends.  And just in case you're like me:

 Idiosyncratic- "an unusual way in which a particular person behaves or thinks"

(I think I'm going to go with this being a good thing, seeing as it doesn't seem likely to change any time soon!)

last stitches

    The last word of "2015," stitched just before 2015's last midnight.

    A year.

    There is much of it that is gone from memory.

    From a few steps back . . . a blur of cloth and thoughts.  Scraps.