Guest post at Vision and Verb: On becoming a gramma

-
-

James 6 months ago, at about 12 hours old

Today I am sneaking out of hibernation to write a guest post at the lovely Vision and Verb (. . . a global gathering of women of this age). My sister Ginnie, a collaborator at V&V (and at her own photoblog Heart & Soul and blog In Soul), asked me to write about being a gramma. I am honored to join the women who write there, but what a challenge it is to gather in my feelings and set them down. Well, here goes. (Oh, and he is 6 months old today.)

Get everything finished beforehand, because it will be some time before you get anything “important” done again.  Keep reading . . . 

-
- 

Our lady, and the onions of Chartres

-

-

 

Our Lady, and the onions of Chartres

Her mismatched spires grow like flamboyant Gothic stalks of wheat and corn out of the fecund plain of Beauce. In medieval days the bounty from these fields was stacked on the cathedral steps, which served as the town bazaar. On the south porch, onions, potatoes and turnips were sold from baskets and wagons under three arches where Jamb’s saints and martyrs in stone supervised. For centuries pilgrims have crawled to Mary’s treasured dress inside—the Sancta Camisia— the sepia’d muslin garment the virgin mother wore over her labor-convulsing body when her boy was born, frail now as onion skin, behind glass and guarded by seraphim. Where has she gone, that woman? I want to feel her warm belly through the dress, the baby kicking. I want to hear her croon to him when his little paw jerks in the air and she nudges her nipple into his trembling mouth.

I am standing under the red and blue pools of brilliant clerestory windows beholding how the brown and buff stone of the labyrinth floor curves and hooks. In the stunning Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière (our lady of the beautiful window) Mary wears a dress of lapis lazuli (the pigment patrons bought for painters more valuable than gold, to give her honor). She is impossibly high, with censers swinging over her crown. The straight, plain wooden chairs have been removed from the floor this one day in a month, so I can walk the labyrinth, slowly. I invite her spirit to rest upon me. It is the year of epiphany, the zenith of my soul’s quest, yet as a result of my measured steps no flames fall from the windows or maternal roots of mystical spirituality curl around my pilgrim feet. The virgin does not bare her glassy breast and offer sacred blue milk. The womb of the church is empty, dark, silent.

We go out and cross the cold street into a cozy brasserie for rustic onion soup, the tables close and crowded under centuries of beams. I excuse myself to find the toilet up a winding stair and half-way up come to a room with its door ajar and window open. Light from the late afternoon sun reflects off the stone building across the street, pouring in on nothing but sacks and sacks of onions wall to wall and piled, spilling upon each other like stones in a quarry, like the fallen stones of Jerusalem. I stare what seems a good while at the nimbuses of holiness surrounding each little onion head and their burlap wraps. How sleepily alive they seem. I go up to the toilet and come back down, pausing one last time at the onion nap room. Back at the table the soup has arrived. I stir the hot salty broth, twirling the white rings, playing like a dervish in a schoolyard with my spoon. I consume, and am consumed by, the labyrinth of the onion.

Listen to Hans Christian play a cello improvisation, from his album
Sancta Camisia, recorded in Chartres Cathedral:

 -

Photos: Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière and labyrinth from wiki commons; Sancta Camisia Metis Linens; onion photo mine. 

-

- 

-

Nouvelle 55: Nelson's Mandala

-

-

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

-

-

"The blog thing" at 5 years

da-
-

My first blog post

Five years ago this week was my first blog post. You can see it above, though the template was different. My sister Ginnie ("Bootsie" to me) was my first and only commenter for some time and the first person I knew who had a blog (the wonderful In Soul). Three months later, my "brother" rauf introduced himself from India, and much more of the world opened to me via his posts at Daylight Again. And so the wonder began. Let me wander as I wonder at the full hand of these years.

∞ I picked the name synchronizing after seeing my hand held device "synchronizing" with my computer when I linked them at the end of a work day. I liked the idea of bringing things together in some kind of unity. I changed it to synch-ro-ni-zing, adding the hyphens, to sort of help people understand that "synchronizing" is different from "synchronicity."  This blog isn't necessarily about meaningful coincidence (synchronicity), but more about the intentional pairing of things.

∞ My blog is just as eclectic today as it was five years ago. You might find Paris paired with Bishop the barncat, memories of my mom with a walk in the meadow, or raptures over a sublime salad during a long, beautiful winter. I just tell you what's going on inside. This past year I've done that more in poems, because I've been writing more poems, a direct result of being freshly and deeply inspired by blog friends. You know who you are.

∞ Speaking of blog friends, I have met some of the most wonderful people of my life, here, in these five years at synch. There is more talent, imagination, insight, knowledge, wisdom, humor, experience, story-telling skill, beauty, strength and love here than anyone who doesn't blog might understand.

∞ As a result of these friends and conversations, I have changed. I have grown more confident, better at writing, better at photography, better at life, better at me! It has been like a non-stop class in the arts and humanities, critical thinking, communication, and the soul's journey. The world has shrunk, and so have I. I am less, and I am more.

∞ Blogger has gotten better and easier to use. I pay $3.95 a year for this space, since I overflowed my space limit sometime in the last year or two. I'd say it's a pretty darn good bargain. Compare it to, say, a Burger King Whopper ($3.29).

∞ Two years ago today I received the honor of Blogger's Blog of Note, eleven days after my friend Barry of An Explorer's View of Life received the same honor. I was fortunate to find him through that award, instantly enthralled by his story-telling sweetness. Of course we didn't know we would lose him the next year to cancer. I rejoice, and gasp, whenever I see his comments in old posts around the blogosphere. He is still with us, but I miss him.

∞ Vastly more important than Blog of Note, immeasurably more, is the reward of being together with you, in this heartland. Hear what Walt Whitman meant in his poem "Song of Myself," for yes, this blog is a song of myself! always about myself, because it is from my heart. Yet for me and for you and your blog, our songs are like his song. The song of "myself" is not just about me, but contains much more . . .

“ . . . in all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less
and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them . . .”

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”

“For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

And this from his Song can be our guiding light, because while we read each other's words (and lots and lots of books), as Rumi says in a similar vein, "Let the beauty we love be what we do. / There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."

A little gift of gratefulness

In the list of traditional gifts for [wedding] anniversaries, five years is celebrated with gifts of wood. It feels appropriate seeing the spruce bough in my first post, in light of this. And also in this light, I would like to celebrate my full hand of joy and gratitude by sending one of you a [humble] hand painted wooden ornament of a special bird here on the farm: a bluebird. It will look something like the one I painted for Peter's girlfriend for Christmas, below. (I just started tole painting, cultivating my dormant Swedish roots from Grandma Olive.) After wandering through the bag of friends who leave a comment at this post, I'll announce the person I randomly choose (with List Randomizer, so cool) on the anniversary of my blog on Friday, January 21. Then I will paint a bluebird, with you in mind specifically, whoever you are, and with the bluebird in mind in his round russet breast and shy, quiet presence. And I will paint meditating on the rest of you too, and the connections we hold so dearly in our hearts. This gift is a way to be reminded that we are physical beings, who touch and feel material things. The blog thing is real.

But even though our blogs are tangible -- seeming somehow indelible on the Internet -- and our blog friends are true friends, we and our blogs will fade one day like leaves of grass, like wood dust. But oh, my friends, we are also stardust.

 Though I incorporated the crack in this slice of ash wood

into Andrea's painting, the disk I paint for one of you will have no crack,

I pray! Don found beautiful seasoned oak

and has already cut the piece.

This could be your piece of wood :)

-- about 6" diameter, with a bluebird from the farm.

I'll gladly mail it anywhere in the world. 

(I have also created several other blogs. Oh dear. Yes I would create one a month just to design it if I had time to maintain them all. Currently: daily posts at RUMI DAYS and A Year with Rilke (the latter with Lorenzo of The Alchemist's Pillow) -- see sidebar for regular updates. These daily readings are nourishment for my soul.) 

Family (H)art

-

-

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.

-

-