Poem for my parents' wedding anniversary: Words and Silence

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My parents with me after Dad had preached his sermon

one Sunday, probably in 1959; I'm guessing

it was Mother's Day; I am the youngest of 8 kids;

my parents were 40 when I was born in 1956;

I remember this day, and being grumpy

for this shot. I needed a nap. (still do)

Yesterday was my parents' wedding anniversary; they were married in 1941. They both passed away in the 1990s. I suppose something we never stop doing is to look for them when they're gone, mostly in ourselves. I thought about them a lot yesterday, remembering how they would give each other anniversary cards at the breakfast table, with an acronym on the envelope. They could not open their cards until they figured out what the acronym stood for. (Could be something such as: T. T. M. H. M. I. T. W.) By the way, speaking of handsome (catch that?), Robert of The Solitary Walker has a wonderful new blog about the inner journey called words and silence. I guess that phrase has been on my mind lately too as a result.

Words and Silence

My mother was a talker. An enthusiast.
She’d meet us at the front door with a book
open in hand, ready to expostulate. “Oh, hello,
Mom.” “Hello. Wait till you hear this,” she’d say.

Our father was quiet (when not in the pulpit
or visiting parishioners at home or in the hospital).
Still waters and all that. Mom talking
at her end of the ten-seated dinner table,
he waiting at his end, not saying
a word, hands on his lap, not eating,
and finally someone notices that
he’s waiting. “Potatoes, Dad? Pickles?”
When he smiles his faint smile,
you’ve found it, and you pass it to him.

They are long gone, but I taste them
here in my mouth. My mother’s excitement
about life, her garrulous smorgasbord
spilling across the table. My father’s
silence—waiting, so often waiting—
for the salt or beans or something else spread
out upon the table in front of us, content
to let the empty space of his buttercup plate
just rest awhile.


March 2012

Poetry should be heard.

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Nouvelle 55: Nelson's Mandala

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Nelson's mandala "synch-ro-ni-zing"

It never once occurred to me to write a Nouvelle 55 for my 55th birthday. But it did to my brother Nelson who wrote this one for my birthday post today. It is based on this complex and radiant mandala he designed for me in April. When he created it he meditated on the name of my blog, and flights of imagination caught him. I see me at the center. I see the overlapping worlds that touch me. I see crosses . . . perhaps the religion of my past. I see XOXO - the symbols of hugs and kisses which commenters and I use for one another. I see memories, stories, all that has made me who I am. I see the worlds of others around the country and world whose lives have come into mine through blogging. I see vibrancy and life, and most of all color.

Nelson is the oldest of eight kids, I'm the youngest. We didn't bump into each other much at home, since he went off to college before I began kindergarten. He did have a part in naming me. He was sweet on a certain girl, so when Dad asked what they should name me if I was a girl, Nelson said her name, "How about Ruth Anne?"

It wasn't until 1995, the year I turned 40 (the age of my parents when I was born) that our friendship began. When Dad died of cancer six weeks after his diagnosis, Nelson and I were given the task of designing the funeral program for him. The family had to take special care arranging the funeral of a minister who had conducted countless funerals in our little town. While Nelson and I sat with our heads together at the dining table over the typewriter designing the printed program for the service, gradually, and unrelated to our task, out trickled traces of our own stories, revealing similar feelings about growing up in our home. It hadn't always been easy.

Since then, we've grown to be close friends. We talk about the mysteries of the soul, and we're both deeply optimistic about that. "Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward." Do you know which Nelson said that?

The haiku-esque stanzas of Nelson's poem are like layered stairs of time, bearing our separate-yet-interconnected steps toward spiritual freedom.

These gifts live and move.

Nouvelle 55: Eight Twenty-two

An age ago
Sophia undraped Ruth,
baby number eight.

   Soon number one
   teased out smiles and, later,
   steps from her stances.

      Then he hid in ivied halls;
      when he emerged
      she dropped petals for his bride.

         That couple drove
         into the sunrise
         and Ruthie blossomed.

            Presently
            she soars under stars,
            inspiring him onward and upward.


            Mandala and Poem © Nelson Hart, 2011

Nelson's Note: Ruth describes Nouvelle 55 as a flash fiction or poem in 55 words based upon a work of art. Nelson describes mandala as a symbol of the relationship between the larger world and our inner world; the image accepts life's tension and ambivalence. Carl Jung believed them to arise out of “the unconscious self." For information on mandalas in the Indian subcontinent, see this.

Ruth’s note: Sophia is a feminine aspect of God in the Gnostic tradition. Some say She fell from grace and created the material world, still expressing the light of God. She’s the deep mystery of wisdom (and the wisdom of mystery?). Lately when I pray, I pray to her. I don’t think Nelson knew that when he wrote his poem.

Us 8 kids in 1961 (?)
bookended by Ruthie and Nelson, 

with Ginnie (Boots) 3rd from right;
I loved my matching dress and sweater set,
and velvet shoes

Nelson and Peg's wedding in 1964; I was junior bridesmaid;

our brother Bennett who passed away in 1996 stands next to Nelson;
and our Dad is next to Bennett

Dad married Nelson and Peg in his Baptist church

 my college graduation in 2001 when I was 44,
with Ginnie (Boots) and Nelson,
a sister and brother of the soul as well as the blood

Nelson and me at our great-niece Katy's wedding in May 2011

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Poem: Departures

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I am on vacation (stay-cation) and am 'supposed' to be working on my book this morning, a self publishing project that I hope to have ready in the fall for anyone interested. Well, I came across this poem in that partial volume, written in 1994, and I thought I'd post it. I am the youngest of eight children. This is about my next older sibling, four years my senior. He doesn't read my blog, but even if he did, I'm not sure he'd find anything in this poem that is untrue or unfair. He was my best buddy growing up. He tried to teach me to laugh at myself when I struck out at neighborhood baseball. He didn't succeed, but I love him for trying.

Departures

He arrived home like a Fenian
in his long-haired sheep coat,
dirty from bus sides, the smell of English
cigarettes a celebration in his hair,
maroon patent platforms cracked
from two lavish weeks on London sidewalks,
fulvous Lennon wire-rims the keystone,
his mark of triumph.

At 18,
he had pocketed his tuition money and cast
the coins over his shoulder into the Thames.

I noticed him camber slightly
as they stepped from the station wagon,
then straighten to the same height as Dad,
the first time my brother ever appeared
a stranger in our town, combating the gravel
of the driveway, so unlike Dad, even calumnious
in his gait, the jingle of foreign currency
audible above the restraint of our welcome.

It was then I knew he had entered a mezzanine
decade or century or maybe an island
where he began to linger
away from us, although 25 years later
he still lives in the same town.
He approached my mother and me on the porch
and, looking me in the eye,
departed across the channel, oars cocked.

Listen to a podcast of this poem here.

Photo still of London in 1970 from the movie "Follow Me" found here.

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Saturday Nights in the Minister's House

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Before my time, my father was an itinerant preacher, driving his old car through the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia to four parishes, preaching sermons and ministering to the rural poor. They needed saving, and he had a heart for them. Maybe this is why he kept walking even long after he left Virginia for Michigan, where I was born. He was a walker, a bicycle rider, a car driver, a grocery store cart pusher. Get out the way of the good reverend.

Saturday nights, alone in the upstairs hall he paced in shirt and tie through a tunnel of ancient books with his shoes on, never in stocking feet or barefoot, on the velvet leaves of the Persian runner, rehearsing his Sunday sermon. Striding rhythmically by the books aligned at the edge of every shelf, his feet rang the steps from one end of the hall where his oak desk filled the bay window to the other end at the screen-doored balcony, the toes of his pendulum feet dotting each “i” and jotting every tittle of his Biblical speech.

Beneath him, I sat in the living room with the TV, hearing through the ceiling the creaking cadence of his feet. I prayed the walking would carry on, that he wouldn’t come down and see me watching and listening to a program he didn’t approve with a worldly man on the screen: Dean Martin, born forty years before me, the same year as my dad, but destined for a different vocation. In a black tuxedo, white shirt, and bow tie coming undone with one finger, he crooned. He stood on a different kind of platform, with another kind of mic than my father's. He sang me a rock glass lullaby, loving me with eyes half open from within a nimbus of cigarette smoke.

I had a thing for older men who looked different than my red-haired father. I went for men with dark hair and graying temples. If they were olive-skinned and brown-eyed, I was smitten. Even as a teenaged girl riding on airplanes to visit my sister in Chicago, I kept my eye on the middle-aged gentlemen in suits. I was too innocent, and outwardly aloof, to fall prey to the wrong kind of man, but I had fantasies of their attentions. Dean Martin was the model older man of my daydreams — beautiful, charming and funny.

If my dad paused in place in the hallway above me, suddenly silent, my heart would stop. I’d watch with anxiety for him to appear at the French doors. Then the old oak floorboards above me would chirp again and chide: a phrase in the sermon had been wrong. He’d stopped his hallway itinerary, corrected the line or word, and his steps were off again, pacing steadily, my heart commencing its beat.

I wondered what he had rewritten in the pause, and hallowed in cradling breath, what halo of dust was stirred up around his hesitating feet. What would I hear Sunday morning from the pulpit microphone that he had altered, out of some fault that needed forgiving, so that this time his voice would sound something like crooning?




 


Photo credits:
Top: Rolfe Horn
Bottom: "Candy Cigarette" by Sally Mann

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Goldenrod, by Mary Oliver

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Goldenrod

On roadsides,
    in fall fields,
      in rumpy branches,
          saffron and orange and pale gold,

in little towers,
    soft as mash,
        sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers,
             full of bees and yellow beads and perfect flowerets

and orange butterflies.
    I don't suppose
       much notice comes of it, except for honey,
            and how it heartens the heart with its

blank blaze.
    I don't suppose anything loves it except, perhaps,
         the rocky voids
              filled by its dumb dazzle.

For myself,
    I was just passing by, when the wind flared
        and the blossoms rustled,
             and the glittering pandemonium

leaned on me.
    I was just minding my own business
          when I found myself on their straw hillsides,
              citron and butter-colored,

and was happy, and why not?
    Are not the difficult labors of our lives
        full of dark hours?
           And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far,

that is better than these light-filled bodies?
    All day
         on their airy backbones
             they toss in the wind,

they bend as though it was natural and godly to bend,
    they rise in a stiff sweetness,
         in the pure peace of giving
            one's gold away.

~ Mary Oliver

The poem "Goldenrod" was published in New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1992.

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Family (H)art

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Come in, come in, just follow the crowds (hehe). I hope you don’t mind if I indulge myself. I have created a gallery of visual art by members of my family. It’s my gift to me mostly, an acknowledgement of the love of growing up with Art as a recurring character in our family tree. It’s long, but you can be grateful that every single member of my family is not represented. In total we number 70 living souls, if I count correctly (math is not my strongest subject), but I am only including the visual artists, several of whom have passed on. I'm sharing 15 artists in all. I am defining visual art narrowly, as what you can hang on a wall (except for one exception, one of Lesley’s). Please click on the images if you’d like to see the details enlarged. I’ll start from oldest to youngest, except me. I’ll be last, but it doesn’t mean I’m saving the best for it. I’m just trying to be polite. Of course just look at pictures if you don't want to read all the information about the artists. I wouldn't blame you one bit, I know you're busy. This is documentation for my family and me as much as anything.

DISCLAIMER: I took photographs of many of these images, or the artists did, so there might be glare, or distortions. Blur your eyes when necessary.

Welcome, won’t you come in? Would you like an audio guide? They’re only $5. Or you can leave your photo ID. (I don’t really have an audio guide, I was just kidding.)

Corn, by Grandma Elizabeth

1 Grandma Elizabeth  b. 1870 d. 1957. My dad’s mother was 47 when Dad was born (and his dad, also a minister, was 70 when Dad was born and fought in the Civil War!), and I do not know if I met her. She died in Charlottesville, Virginia less than a year after I arrived. When my older siblings knew her, she was deaf and used an ear horn to hear. I know little else. Were we ever surprised when Dad was dying gently on a hospice bed in his dining room in 1995, and someone found this corn painting of Grandma’s in the attic. We had never seen nor heard of it, or that she was an artist. Lucky me, it’s hanging on the wall in our bedroom. (We don't have a formal dining room, where it would be more appropriate.) Sorry about the glare and distortion, I tried to photoshop it out and just couldn't get all of it.

2 Grandma Olive  b. 1891 d. 1960. I’ve posted about Grandma Olive, my mom’s mother, many times at this blog. I have no memory of her, she died when I was 3 or 4. After graduating from the Art Institute in Chicago, Olive was a professional artist/designer/illustrator in the 1920s and 30s. She designed clothes for Vogue and wallpaper for Thibaut. Her pen and ink drawings illustrated World Book encyclopedias and newspaper ads. You know that curious little sepia girl studying life from my sidebar? It’s one of hers, from a page in World Book, below. In this gallery I’ve also included a cabinet she painted that now lives in our family room. Mom said her mother used to go tromping on the streets of NYC looking for dilapidated bargains and would bring them home and doll them up. Below is also her cover illustration for the Bayonne Times (she resided in Bayonne, New Jersey) when the NY Holland Tunnel opened – the world’s first vehicular tunnel.

Illustration in World Book Encyclopedia, Grandma Olive

The "bastard" cabinet (so-called by an antiques dealer
who said it mixed many styles)
that Grandma Olive rescued and painted

Cover and detail in the Bayonne Times, on the event

of the opening of the Holland Tunnel, by Grandma Olive

3 Uncle Jimmie  b. 1906 d. 1994. My dad’s 10-year-older brother. The subject of a poem I posted. Uncle Jimmie had his own printing company, and he used to send us calendars at Christmas with prints from his carved woodblocks. Woodblock prints require a long, arduous and painstaking process, with a different block carved for each color, leaving the rest of the design uncarved and left for another block, then having to align everything perfectly.

Woodblock prints, by Uncle Jimmie 

4 Mom  b. 1916 d. 1997. Though my mom was a musical artist (pianist, choir director and composer), not so much a visual one, I’m including sheet music from an operetta she wrote based on Alice in Wonderland, which I only just learned about from my niece Shari, herself a splendid pianist, who inherited her grandma's handwritten sheet music. It has Mom's maiden name on it, but I have no idea when she wrote it. I think the flourishes of musical note flags are lyrically and visually beautiful. I sat by my mom on the piano bench as a toddler while she composed, watching her play a phrase, then transcribe the notes onto staff paper, painstakingly, one phrase at a time. Eventually I started pounding out melodies after hearing them repeated so often, surprising everyone. Too bad I didn't turn into a prodigy.

My mom's composition of the operetta, Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, never published

5 Dad  b. 1917 d. 1995. The image of him at right is the day he pronounced Don and me Husband & Wife. In his early days as a minister, my father supplemented his income with signs he painted. He was a fine pen and ink artist as well and created his own bookplate, below. Engravers duplicated the image on his and Mom's gravestone. Hart was his name, but it was also an animal (another word for deer) in a beautiful Psalm verse that represented his heart for God: As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, oh God.  ~ Psalm 42:1.

Dad's pen and ink bookplate.

Mom and Dad's grave stone, with Dad's art work
(that's the headstone of my childhood Dr. Garlock behind)

6 Boots, aka Ginnie  My sister.

I grew up watching Bootsie draw. She drew this girl very early, in high school I think. Now she uses Soul Girl as her avatar at In Soul, her blog, after I suggested it, since it so perfectly represents her spirit. She is also an inspired photographer, and I am including a photo of windmills, one of her favorite symbols. She lives near Amsterdam with her wife Astrid, where they are legally married. (When oh when will we catch up in the U.S.?) I like that both these images are about wind. Her blog is In Soul and her photoblog is Hart & Soul, where she unfolds her beautiful eye and insights into life.

Soul Girl, by Ginnie

Windmills, by Ginnie

7 Bennett  My brother, who passed away in 1996.

I’ve blogged about Bennett a lot. I think there is no one who has shaped my world view more than he did, eight years my senior. He loved to shoot rustic scenes in Nova Scotia and New England. He shot this Greek Orthodox priest in Greece in the 1970s. (Do you think they were related?) Bennett died before the advent of digital photography, and I think he would have loved it, though he also had his own dark room and loved to spend hours deep into the night developing prints. I have no way of knowing if this print I photographed was one he was happy with, since he discarded so many out of perfectionism. My photo of it also does not do it justice, and one of these days we’ll need to scan it or its negative (I think one of my nephews Paul or Todd, see below, might have Ben’s negatives). This photo, which he made a very large print of, won grand prize at a photography show, and was breathtaking. I have also included the poster he used to advertise his work. The grasshopper was his “avatar.” (Again, sorry for the glare on that one.)

Greek Orthodox priest, by Bennett

Bennett's photography show poster

8 John My brother.

John and Bennett are in the photo at right at the Acropolis in 1970 -- John is on the left; click to see their handsome faces better. John is my closest sibling in age, four years my senior. We spent many hours at the kitchen table sketching, and I was always amazed at his abilities. Strange story of synchronicity: As I was preparing this post last weekend, Don found the following charcoal John did of our dad in our barn in my dad’s things, quite by accident, accompanied by the touching poem. In a quick phone call to John he told me he believes he created them together sometime in his teens. I'll type out the poem here, because it touches me and expresses something of my own sense of things growing up.

You were tall and I was small—

I gazed wide-eyed at your legs and feet.

You’d hear the ring, then answer the call

and head off down the street.

(I tried, when you walked,

to follow along, but your steps were hard to reach).

And it seemed to me you never talked,

except to pun or preach.

Your silent side was good for me;

it helped me grow inside.

I watched and listened, and I could see

the heart you couldn’t hide.

I remember well one hurtful day

how you loved me in your quiet way.

You stood at my door with tears in your eyes;

your heart reached for mine with pain-laden sighs.

When I was liddle I watched you diddle—always on your knee;

You were tall and I was small, but I knew it was just for me,

‘cause after awhile—

you’d smile.

~ John

charcoal of Dad, poem to Dad, by John

9 Todd  My nephew – my sister Nancy’s son.

Todd is a web and graphic designer, among many other things. The first image, titled “Esther,” is a pen and ink drawing he created in high school. Todd has also started a photography business doing photo shoots with models (his web site is here). The second image of Margaret was shot during a photo session at our farm.

Esther, by Todd

Margaret, by Todd, shot at our farm

10 Paul  My nephew -- my brother Jim’s son.

Paul's four kids are often his photo subjects. Paul provides design for software professionally and is also quite successful selling his photos at iStock on the side. (His best seller? A hospital emergency sign.) I fell in love with these two portraits of his kids Lydia, Eli, Aden and Clara, when he posted them at his flickr photostream, taken at our family cottage about a month ago. In fact, these images were what got me inspired to do this family gallery. They remind me of a cut-out silhouette we had done at Knott’s Berry Farm when Lesley was little (right).

Clara and Aden, by Paul

Lydia, Eli, Clara and Aden, by Paul, at our cottage

11 Mark My nephew -- Ginnie/Bootsie’s son.

Mark shot this spontaneous family portrait of us on the frozen lake over New Year’s one year. That’s our family cottage on the hill in the upper left of the photo. Mark is a computer programmer and also studied photography at the Maine Photographic Workshops. I’m trying to remember why we were smiling so geekily in this photo, I think we had just been skating around and slipping on the sliding ice like spazzes. We’ve paused for Mark and are holding on to each other for dear life. Oh! I just noticed . . . that scarf hugging Lesley's head is one of the only things I've ever knitted.

Family Portrait, by Mark

12 Rachel My niece – my brother John’s daughter.

Rachel lives in Utah with her husband Swede and is dying to have her own studio to create art again. She teaches English and math to special needs students in middle school. I just love this acrylic Paris painting, her own version of Starry Night. Don't Swede and Rachel look like they were just tango-ing?

Paris, by Rachel

13 Lesley   My daughter.

Lesley went to art school in Detroit (College for Creative Studies), earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design, and a minor in Fibers. I have some gorgeous wearable art she has made. When she has time and energy after working very hard as a commercial interior designer in NYC, she knits, makes beautiful jewelry and creates re-styled clothes from vintage. I have included her charcoal self-portrait from art school, an interesting technique of covering the paper/canvas with charcoal then rubbing out the drawing with an eraser. Below that is a photo of a retail space she spent about 18 months designing with her boss at Spin Design where she still works, including the design of custom furnishings. I am especially fond of the gold mesh chandelier "sheaths." It is the Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet’s newly opened flagship store on 57th Street in NYC. I think the least expensive watch they sell is about $10,000, so please do browse -- you might bump into Arnold Schwarzenegger or Meryl Streep, who are AP customers. I like the juxtaposition of Lesley’s bohemian art school self and the posh watch store.

Self, by Lesley

Audemars Piguet flagship store, designed by Spin Design (by Lesley and her boss)

14 Peter   My son. 

Like my mom, Peter is a remarkable musician (guitarist, arranger). But he is also an artist and amateur photographer. This painting is one he did in Advanced Placement Studio Art in high school, in the manner of Peter Max. The photograph below that is one he shot in Hilo, Hawaii. Peter continually inspires me with his photographs and also excels at videography. (The photo of Peter and me is from a few years ago.)

Purty Gerty, by Peter

Hilo puddle, by Peter

15 Me My self.

I can draw some, but I don’t apply discipline or practice, so just sketching something once or twice a year means I haven’t developed my skills. The sketches span decades: a young man in a magazine while I studied abroad, Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain a couple of years back, an imagined girl 20 years ago, and a drawing for a Christmas card around that same time. If this is not your first visit to this blog, you know I love to take photos. The first photograph below is probably a favorite of mine, shot early one morning in October 2006, when I went out on Horseshoe Lake where our family cottage is, in Lesley’s kayak, with my little point and shoot Olympus. I watched the moon set and the sun rise in that two hour float. If you look very closely, you can see geese on the water at the left. The next photo is the same lake, same morning, the sun rising in fog, just about 30 minutes later. It may look silent, but dozens of geese were honking (like vuvuzelas). It is a strange feeling to hear something so loud and close, that is invisible.

Sketches, by me

two photos of Horseshoe Lake

top: moon setting -- can you see the geese in the mist at the left near the horizon?

bottom: 30 minutes later, sunrise

by me

Well, that's it! Thank you very much for visiting my family gallery today. I know it was long. Bravo for getting down to here. You can put your audio guide thingie over there by the door before you leave. Now the sun is up, and I hope you found some visual pleasure in the comfort of your chair.

There is more artistic talent in my family, including Nelson who designs kitchens, Susan who plays piano like a goddess, Nancy who decorates houses that should be in magazines, Jim who has skilled craftsman hands, and their many children, and their children, who are fragrant with artistic talent as well.

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