Ornamental

postcards

  it is a quiet afternoon at my mother's house.  we've been doing little piddling things:  i cut her little strip of a backyard, then trimmed the edges with a weeder.  strings were tied for creeping lady bankia roses.  the dogs have been walked, a lot.  it is hot here, very hot, and walks are either early in the morning or after the sun has set.  i've read, and she has read, and we watched parts of Lonesome Dove on tv last night.  this is a quiet stretch, now that things have settled in a bit.  i'm sitting at my computer, have sorted through some photographs i took a week or so ago, then thought i'd send them on their gentle way to you. i came across the four leaf clovers a week or so ago, when i flipped through some books to send on their way to the library's used bookstore.  i have to do this - like checking pants pockets before running a load of laundry - because inevitably i will have tucked something within a book's pages.  photographs, snippets of notes, a five dollar bill, a piece of lace, and dozens of lucky clovers have turned up:  flat treasure hidden for me to find again. evening light, aglow

heart rock, perched at the edge of lingering light 

 
after the rain

i love this photograph of june at home.  do you notice anything special, other than the mist that hovers over those beloved mountains?  i had stepped out onto the deck in the twilight as hundreds of lightning bugs began to rise from the grass, from between the branches of trees.  there, in the bottom right corner of the photo, is captured the magical, luminescent flight of one of the little lanterns of firefly road.

 blending into the rain, like stars in the midnight sky
revealed

 and my little friend was not shy, in the least

and down at my mother's house, sweet beauty in her placement of the simplest of things:

unpolished silver, tarnished to a lustrous iridescent sheen -

and shy willows, basking in the light of late afternoon sun.
they quietly dream.
xo

traveling is not for babies

 
it is not for babies!  or so, daddy said.  he didn't mean the lucky little ones who get to travel here and there to far flung places along with their loving parents.  no; he meant that travel is so often these days not for the feint of heart.  and i agree with daddy's wise words that he ushered to me when i had just returned from another teaching trip out west, in early april:  it meant rushing to meet a ferry, to return the (expensive) rental car, an overnight flight with several connections (one with a very long delay, from 5:30am to 10:30am in the crazy atlanta airport), an 80 minute drive home, another 40 minute drive one way back in the same direction a couple of hours later to pick walter up from the kennel that was only open from three to five on sunday afternoons.  traveling isn't easy when airlines will not be gentle or understanding with the bereaved, when they offer to do away with a penalty fee for changing a ticket but think nothing of charging an extra 500.00 for an earlier flight.  it isn't easy when one is charged 55.00 one way for luggage (tools take up an entire suitcase), when meals are not included, when a pillow is no longer provided for those overnight flights.  i miss the days of travel when folks dressed a little nicer than cut off shorts, when fellow travelers weren't grumpy or frazzled or disgusted with the general state of things.  this, i think, is what daddy was talking about. i've been hard at work with my design that features the words daddy thought would be a wonderful piece of jewelry; he was always my biggest fan, a staunch supporter who helped me get set up in a metalworking studio back in 1991 after i had come back from a two week metals class at penland, north carolina.  i had sent out a letter to my regular jewelry customers (every christmas season while i was living in montgomery back in the late 80's and early 90's, i held a little open house and jewelry sale) telling them of my intentions to begin working in brass and silver - asking them to donate whatever they felt they could for my class fees, and promising to make them a new piece of jewelry upon my return - and daddy filled in the gap between what i was able to raise and what i needed for new tools of the trade.  he saved every single book and magazine in which i was published, and faithfully kept a scrapbook of articles and photographs of my work.  he was proud, so proud, of me, and the piece that i've designed is in honor of proud daddy. after daddy had passed away, after i returned home and was able to see a little more clearly, after i had sorted through the piles of things that had accumulated in the three months i was away, after i was able to walk into the studio and to feel that i was ready to begin, i pulled out some PMC (precious metal clay) and spent two days perfecting a heart pendant that bore daddy's words.  there was much measuring and straightening, rolling and stamping and cutting and sanding, then tumbling and tarnishing and polishing before i was satisfied enough to send the prototype on its way to my regular caster.  then the waiting began.  ten days later, the package finally arrived after a three day delay in shipment due to horrid weather.  i decided to have the heart cast in brass, since the price of silver is sky high these days, and i didn't have the funds to order multiple pieces of a heart that measures 1 3/4" x 1 1/2".  so, cast it in brass they did, and i've spent much time aging them with a lovely patina that highlights the lettering and texture (the original piece was pressed into a bit of lace that i pulled from an old blue doll trunk that had been my mother's as a child).  too, i've paired the pendant with a length of vintage 1940's brass watch chain from a roll that i purchased back in 1999 from an old costume jewelry supply factory that was closing its doors.  all these years i'd held on to that chain, waiting for the right moment to come along.  the heart hangs, as other charm pendants have that i've offered, from a silverplate watch fob hook, and hangs right over one's heart, where it will grow warm from your skin.  i like that it can be removed from the hammered sterling ring.  for those of you who've purchased charms in the past, you'll now have a chain that can be interchanged with the various pieces you've collected.  i like that interchangeability, a lot. i'm not a believer in a mass market approach to my work.  having something cast into sterling or brass to use as a component in a necklace or bracelet design that i sit and pull together, alone in my studio or sitting on the sofa at my mother's house, tray in my lap - well, this is my way to make a piece that will not cost nearly as much as my usual pieces, but is many steps above what you might typically find in an inexpensive gift shop or craft supply store, something made in massive amounts overseas from parts that are cheaply produced in a huge factory line.  i make each necklace myself, i twist each piece of sterling wire here to connect my signature charms and designs, and the finished product is from a limited production line that will be offered for a very short time.  each piece is signed on the back, by me.  little old me.  assembling these necklaces has been a slow, sometimes too slow, process that has left me at times impatient, but for the most part very proud.  and i know that daddy is looking over my shoulder every step of the way, nodding his head, tears in his eyes, everlasting love in his gentle heart.  and this time, i've had the encouragement and approval of my beautiful, beloved mother, who always roots for me in her beautiful genteel way, right at my side every cautious step of the way.
i'll be listing the necklaces in my little etsy shop later today.  but first, i have a mama in the next room that i think i'll go wrap my arms around with a great big, nina bear hug.  xo

 

yes

 
one afternoon last week, in a long string of nameless days, i received what at the time felt like some really wretched news in the mail.  when i read the brief letter, maybe three sentences that seemed calloused and cold, i felt a heavy sinking in my chest that left an empty hole.  or, so i thought.  the sun had been shining that afternoon, and great clouds blew in from the south/southwest; within a minute or two the bottom fell out of the sky, with grey sheets falling straight down, fast and hard, between here and those familiar western mountains.  don't ask me why, i can't even say why, but i ran out to the porch, grabbed that beloved buddha, and carried him out onto the open deck into the pouring rain:  it seemed like the thing to do, a cleansing ritual that was long, long, long overdue.  there was something incredible about the light - watery, liquid, filtered light that shed relief over everything in sight.  we've had not much rain here in the south for weeks, and now here it was, falling down onto the green summer leaves, on my bare tank top shoulders, on my tear-streaked face, onto the shut-eyed smile of my quiet buddha.  it was a cleansing rain, gentle and steady and true, and i had the wisdom to run back inside, grab my camera, and come back out to capture the moment for everything that it was.  
as quickly as the thunderstorm came, it stopped and passed on over the surrounding mountains to some other, unseen cove.  the clouds, i am utterly serious here, cracked open overhead to the deepest, bluest sky that lay beyond those billowy edges of white.  i stood there glancing up and out, drenched and amazed, then turned and went back in to find a scrub brush and a bowl of warm, soapy water.  it was a wonderful thing to stand there on that wet deck in my bare feet and wash the buddha that has been in this house with me for six years without ever having had a single bath.  out went the hurt, and the gap in my chest; in came compassion and strength.  i will be just fine.  already, i pass through entire days when not an aching moment of sadness descends.  i think of this, and - hungry as i am for a map, for a plan - i understand with faith and gratitude that there is a promise of fresh new things that wait for me, ahead.
i've been waiting to talk to you all about a project i've been working on in the quiet days after daddy's passing; the final components are not yet back here with me at the house, and i'm anxious for the time to come when i will be able to pull them all together.  i'll wait until i have a piece assembled before i show it to you; for now, imagine the shape of a heart in weathered brass that features daddy's words, with a charm of direction dangling at the bottom.  for now, i'll tell you this much:  think back to early april when i was rushing back and forth from here to alabama and back again, then boarding a plane to fly out to port townsend, washington to teach for three days at artfest.  i was worried about being so far from home, in the midst of daddy's rapid decline; i worried for my exhausted mother, most of all.  still, i managed to go, to be fully there, to teach, and to take jewelry to sell that i'd somehow pulled together in a matter of three short, chilly weeks in march.  two days after flying home on an overnight red eye flight, i drove back down to alabama, and was once again able to stand there at daddy's side.  there were many, many profound and beautiful things that he said to me in those following weeks - nearly a month was i there, listening and taking notes and being In The Moment, there with my mother, there with him.  the first thing he said to me upon my return, when i explained (over and over) that i'd had to leave, to go out west to teach, was this:  "Traveling is not for babies.  You ought to design a piece of jewelry that features those very words.  I know it would sell",  and i nodded and promised him that i would.  i can remember the piercing, direct look in his eyes when he was saying this to me; i'll never forget that moment, ever.  you know most of the rest of the story, with daddy; i'm sure bits and pieces of it will surface for me to share with you from time to time, but for now let me explain that i carried those words safely, firmly in my heart all the way back home with me.  when enough time had passed that i could summon the energy to walk back into the studio, i began working on something that i'd like to offer here in the next week or so.  it is in daddy's memory, and making the final piece in which he was so directly involved has brought me much comfort and peace.
daddy is everywhere here, i might add.  on a daily basis, i am running across little notes that he had written to me in past years, snippets of his words and heart that i had tucked away.  i do not consider it a coincidence that i am now suddenly finding them again; they rest within the front covers of antique books that i randomly pull from a shelf to see what might be inside, they are nestled in an outdated address book that i've decided to toss, they hide under a pile of things on a corner of my disheveled studio table.  i'm no longer surprised when a note turns up, just like that; hello, daddy.  i know that you are always here with me. 
here is the necklace that i have in these past days made for myself, using the words that in april daddy shared with me.  part of the chain is constructed from his old broken army i.d. bracelet, from 1943 (it had rested in his dresser drawer for all those many years, and was given to me by mama as i was leaving to come back home); part of it is fashioned from one of my mother's, which features her family nickname of endearment (her baby brother, my beloved uncle bob, could not pronounce elizabeth, so forevermore she has been ebers), from 1946.  i wear this necklace daily, as a talisman of love.  i wear it, in rain or in shine, as i walk and as i rest, and the silver grows warm next to my skin.  the silver grows warm, from our love. 
xo

small pleasures

 quite a few folks have written to advise me that sadness will crop up at the most unimaginable, unexpected of times, and i know this now to be true:  seeing an ancient, wrinkled old man sitting all alone inside the grocery store on a bench waiting for his care taker to finish her shopping has quickly brought a knotty lump to my throat, even after i managed to catch his eye, to smile and speak to him; a little puppy on a leash in the middle of the sidewalk downtown, wailing to get attention from two admiring young women had the same out-of-nowhere effect.  so did the sight of walter's beloved tennis ball, stranded on the floor of the screened porch as the sunday afternoon light faded quietly into that of muted evening.  a tennis ball?  making me sad?  but it did.  i had to move it back inside, to stop it from looking so forlorn.  "be kind to yourself", others write; "take plenty of naps, read books, do not rush anything", they say.  but the deadlines loomed, the groceries needed purchasing, the mess will not get picked up magically by itself;  i need one of those sorcerer's apprentice brooms to carry water, to whisk the mayhem away.  the ones i had assumed and expected to be in touch with me through this trying time have yet to raise their heads; there are those i've only briefly known who have risen with grace to send me cards and talismans, to write and tell me that they genuinely care.  i'm deeply touched by this; i feel compassion from strangers who are no longer strange.  they tell me they would come and clean the house, were they within driving range; they would come and help me finish my tasks, they would stay with walter so i could wander unhurried for hours in the surrounding woods.  and i know they would, that is the thing.  i absolutely know they would be here, if they could.

 
after two long weeks, i am finally reaching the point where i remember to carve out a little time just for myself, to manage my days so that i accomplish even the simplest of pleasures:  this morning i rose early enough to walk with walter along the river in the park, fifteen minutes from here, before the inevitable summer visitors descended to break the silence along the wooded trail.  not long after we'd begun walking, i stopped with an audible gasp and a tug at my heart:  hello, dear woodthrush.  hello.  i've missed you at home, i have wondered where you had been.  farther down the trail, we stepped across the exposed stones of a bend in the river bed; there at my feet was a lovely, heavy heart shaped stone larger than my streched out hand.  after i had contemplated its hefty weight, the desire to keep it won in the end; i washed it with love in the cold river and carted it all the way back to the car.  it will be perfect to place on daddy's grave, when next i head back to alabama.  for now, it rests out on the porch at the foot of my beloved buddha.

 
have i mentioned that june is my favorite month of the year?  i say this, every year, when it slowly descends.  the lightning bugs come out at dusk, one by five by one hundred and ten, they rise from the velvety grass, they float from the mountainside across the way, they hover at my bedroom window screen at 3am and blink their gentle little morse code lights into the dark to me.   i've straightened up the tiny screened porch, an extended and beloved living space this time of the year; wicker chairs from my parents' huge screened porch at their old home have come to live with me, and it is into one of those creaking pieces of furniture that i now settle every late afternoon, evening, and night, hidden amongst flushed leafy branches of dogwood and walnut trees, a quietened woman soothed by her books, her poetry, her thoughts and dreams.  hummingbirds hover; wrens noisily fuss; bluebirds warble in the dusk their final lilting love song of the day.  there is no woodthrush here, alas, but sometimes i am graced by a scattering of crows that fly high overhead to their own familiar, darkened roosting place.  and sometimes - a gift! - the lovely haunting sound of an owl, drifting in with the nighttime breeze. 

small painted pottery tray with flying woman, by julie whitmore; "November Moon no. 3" little book of artwork by cathy cullis; painted cigar box peeking out with "for keeps" by misty mawn; book i'm slowly savoring is The Paper Garden, beautifully written by poet molly peacock; aqua mason jar was purchased for temporary lightning bug up close viewings; antique bottle stopper, incredibly, was found among the rocks when i first went back to the river after daddy passed away (and to me, it says unstop your heart, let everything out, let it flow...)

  i suppose this is, then, one of those little kindnesses i grant myself:  unconditional permission to sit for small pockets of time without guilt and be quiet, to read and to reflect, to pad back and forth to the porch and back inside, barefooted, wearing soft faded cotton, smelling like amber or sandlewood or patchouli, after a cooling evening shower; i smell like the woods, and the distant rain.  i smell vaguely like my dreams.  i am a little girl, dreaming; i am the woman in faded black, holding on to her little girl dreams.  xo

sweet story

  i haven't really felt much like writing.  i haven't really felt like doing much of anything, truth be told.  but i think it's high time i share a bit of celebration story with you regarding roy's graduation, which fell smack in the middle of daddy's illness, passing, and funeral.  i look back at that week now and wonder how on earth i managed to make it all work with any semblance of sanity at all.  i left for a seven hour drive to wilmington, on the nc coast, after being home from alabama for four short days.  daddy was still with us, but fading rapidly.  ellen flew from alabama to be there with me, to celebrate roy's accomplishments; and robin flew from colorado; we all arrived that wednesday afternoon.  on thursday evening, after we'd spent a full day with the boys, daddy passed away.  time stopped.  ellen and i spent most of the next day holed up in the hotel room there on the edge of the ocean, making phone calls and shifting plans, trying to make all of the loose ends meet.  friday is a blur.  saturday, roy graduated, and sunday we left early to drive the eleven hours down to alabama.  while still in wrightsville beach, we left the sliding glass door open to the sounds of the sea and the wind, we slept with it like that as well.  but our hearts were in alabama, our hearts were with the boys, and being at the edge of the ocean did not really matter in the end.  on saturday morning, a couple of hours before roy was set to graduate, i managed to walk on the beach by myself of a bit.  families were scattered here and there - young parents with small toddlers, grandparents with their children and grandchildren, women like me who were walking alone.  i felt as isolated out there while walking as i ever had in my life.  no one knew the sadness that i held inside of me.  no one realized that my father had slipped away just 30 hours before.  i knew that if i had struck up a conversation with anyone, with any stranger there on the sand, it would have been disastrous.  this was their vacation, their time to relax and unwind; far be it from me to drain my sadness out onto the sand right there at their bare feet.  there is a scene from the beloved movie amelie that comes to mind when remembering how i felt, immersed and saturated as i was by my own sodden grief. (who is this woman hiding behind her weak smile?  she is the daughter of the one who had so recently passed.  she is the walker, wandering alone on the early morning beach at the undulating line that divides water from land). 

my one souvenir from this trip?  a smooth sliver of translucent stone that i plucked and pocketed from the just washed sand.  well, no, not entirely true.  let me back up just a bit to thursday afternoon, where roy and ellen and i received tattoos.  i know.  i do.  i was one who said i'd never get it done, and now i have two.  the first was in new zealand, on the nape of my neck, a small and delicate silver fern frond to symbolize how much i love that place.  and now?  on my left shoulder, a bird of grey and black to symbolize the bluebird, something daddy and i spoke of often, and to daddy, i blow a kiss.  it seemed the time, as he faded from earth and as roy blossomed forth, to commemorate in some way.  those two share the same name - roy grey - and the tattoo is for this.  ellen has an identical one as well, but with grey spelled with an A, for her son benjamin's middle name. ellen snapped this photo of my shoulder on that friday of staying in all day.  from what i can see, i had just risen from bed, judging from the sleepy bed linen creases of my skin.  i forget throughout my days that the little bird is there, he flies so quietly from room to room  - a bird on my shoulder, flying always behind me.  my graduation gift for roy was the tattoo he chose to get that day - a compass on his shoulder that will help him find his way - the perfect gift that will not break, that will not be lost.  in shades of black, not grey. it was a beautiful day, may 14 - a day of rites and passages, a day everyone in that auditorium heard my father's name in roy clearly called out:  roy grey henry.  it was a beautiful day.

  it was a day to tap into our overflowing hearts and share everything that they held - the weakness, the sadness, the strength and pride and ever radiant joy. 

 
full hearts, indeed.  they still overflow, from then until the following week, winding clear on up and through this precious early summer day.
 
xo