Tag Archives: Everyday Life

Everyday Frittering

17 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Home Restoration, In the Garden, Life at Home, Writing

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“How was your day?”

This question my husband asks is the most everyday part of my everyday.  With it, he invites me to punctuate the hours with a label.  Good or bad.  Busy or lazy.  Sometimes with an exclamation point or two.

But last Monday, rather than responding with the usual ‘good’ and almost always, ‘busy,’ I allowed frustration to have its say.   For surely it was frustration and a series of sleepless nights which made me respond that I was frittering my life away.  You know, a little time here.  A little there.  With nothing much to show for it.

Because everything inches along in my everyday life, in stacks of varying states of “to do,”  without anything ever getting done.

First, the garden.  Never ending.  As I like it.

Then, my home improvement du jour.  Never ending.  As I like it.

Ta-da, my work on Dad’s story. Never ending.  Not at all as I like it.

In truth, I am overwhelmed by that story of my father’s growing up years.  And as much as I wish to work on it, —  or wish to wish —  I fear it’s too much.  And I wonder if Dad’s story isn’t the biggest time-fritter of all —  what with research and re-reading of notes and just THINKING about all those stories floating around without a timeline and gleaning perspectives from others.  It’s exhausting without being exhaustive.  Black holes.  Galore.  My ghostly subjects move all across the map like they are running from the law.  Or from me.

Of course, sometimes they did.  Run from the law, that is.  At least, my grandfather did.  It was part of his ‘get rich-quick-and-easy scheme’  that didn’t pan out.  You know that phrase — crime doesn’t pay — well, it could have been coined by all of my grandfather’s hard-working Greek cousins and uncles who got rich the hardworking way — when talking about my grandfather behind his back.

Have I mentioned — somewhere along the way — that my grandfather did a little moonlighting for the Mafia in the twenties and thirties?  Probably not.  It doesn’t come up too often in conversation.

Anyway, since last Monday, I’ve put Dad’s story on the back burner — to get a few things done.  I guess I had need to point to a few dead and done bodies.  I began by laying my first ever flagstone path … which I’ve thought about all the warm winter long — and found it to be much like putting together puzzle pieces of a different kind.

Then, I got my hands dirty in my new herb garden that once, not so long ago, was the concrete pad of the previous owner’s jacuzzi.  Then, since I’m a gambling gardener —

rather than one who plays in the dirt safe — I planted five tomato plants three weeks before the official planting date — my shy way of living on the edge.  I think they’ll be okay.  Especially since my sister said that our mother said that Granny always said that the danger of frost is over once the Elm trees leaf out — which mine did earlier this week. (Sis shared this bit of gardening wisdom with me while we were painting her bedroom a lovely Carribean blue yesterday and today.)

So here’s the crazy thing.  Six years ago, I would never have imagined that I could have done any of these things I did so handily this week.  Flagstone paths?  Garden designs that required the breaking out of a six inch concrete pad?  Painting crisp, clean lines free-hand at the request of others?

So maybe, if I keep frittering away at Daddy’s story… a little time here, a little there, with a whole lot of living on the edge, it will all come together.  Somehow.  Someday.  So help me God.

Yep.  It could happen.

January Leftovers

02 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in Life at Home

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Few will wish for January leftovers when something fresh and piping hot from February’s skillet of life is so readily available.  But here I am anyway.  Still in January. Because sometimes, leftovers are good.  And my January leftovers were very.  So very very, I’m finding them difficult to toss out with February trash.

My feelings on January’s rightness and goodness don’t arise out of the usual ‘feel goods’ we pick up like lint from life when doing right by others, — like helping Sis paint our aunt’s living room last month — or giving Amy what I believe may have been the best birthday gift I could have given — or helping Kara with the before and after gearing up and tearing down of my granddaughter’s Reese’s first birthday party  — you know, those sacrificial acts where we lay down ourselves and our own plans to serve others, only to walk away with hearts strangely light, lugging more love than we left in our wakes.

No, January was memorable for reasons much to do with the way my life carried on the most delicious dialog with works of art.  I watched films galore and read books and went to the art museum and lived my everyday life in between it all.  And I noticed something along the way as I was attending my private January Art Festival of Life: I noticed, for the first time in forever, how art informs life and how life informs art — and how it does this everyday, whenever we bring the two together.  And I noticed how art doesn’t just inform, but how it helps us sometimes to even conform, softening our hearts to receive messages that life alone just can’t.

When my husband asked me his leftover question last month — the one posed last winter, and the winter before that and the winter before that — if it wasn’t time for us to make our own funeral arrangements? — I finally talked to him about it.  I looked him in the eye and begin thinking out loud about what I want to happen and what might help the children, when the time comes — rather than responding as I have for the last three times with a ‘yes I suppose so’ but then doing nothing to make good on that supposed-so yes.

Did this new receptiveness arise out of the recent death of his mother?   No — not even close.  I listened to that tired, wilted question only because I had spent five evenings in January watching films where Death played a leading or supporting role — films like “The Winter Guest” and “Wit” and for the second time, “The Hours” and “Marvin’s Room” and “Evening.”  And I don’t know why I ended up watching so many beautiful stories about death.  I only know, that in ways I cannot fully explain, those movies helped pave the way for me to finally hear my husband’s hard-to-face question.

Another art-life conversation grew out of last week’s surprising encounter with a wasp.  I was stung Tuesday.  Then stung again by words I read on Wednesday — another live-giving passage from An Altar in the World  — on the importance of feeling pain.  And as my index finger throbbed and itched and swelled with leftovers of wasp venom, I endured the discomfort rather than easing it with a dose of Advil.  For three days I lived with a pain that spoke of my humanity.  I heard little whispers  — like how wasps are worth my awareness — how hurting is helpful, because the pain shows us we are still alive, whether our injury is physical or emotional — how life goes on even when injured and even when death is the outcome.  It’s an old lesson that we must learn over and over to death because it never quite sticks. And who could have imagined that a wasp would come out of its hive in January to begin teaching me this lesson on pain and humanity and life and death?

January has borne witness to many exchanges between art and life.  Too many to tell but for one more —  about that pretty antique mesh purse, made of German Silver, featured in the photo above, that became Amy’s birthday gift two weeks ago — that needs to be shared.  The purse came from a collection my mother treasured — which is funny in itself, because Mother not only never carried purses, but she never cared for glitzy, fancy stuff.  She preferred a life of everyday casual — she dressed herself in many-times washed denim —  she never wore cosmetics — and kept her hair cut in a carefree style that allowed her to leave the house with minutes notice.

Anyway, Mother left her prized collection of purses to my sister, who has been trying ever since to sell them to whoever might want them.  And I don’t know why I finally connected Amy to Mother’s purse’s collection, but I believe it had much to do with immersing myself in art.  I was helping Sis paint our aunt’s living room when the dots began dancing together in my mind: I was thinking about Amy’s upcoming birthday…what special thing I might give her as a gift… then I remembered Sis’s unwanted inheritance and how Amy had just borrowed my copy of “Midnight in Paris” which featured an actress portraying a flapper carrying a purse similar to handbags in Mother’s collection.  And somehow, all these leftover dots of dialog came together — and just like that — I had Amy’s perfect birthday gift.  Not only was I giving Amy something she would love, but I was giving her something Mother loved, and something my sister did not — making it a special, three for one moment that forms a perfect trinity.

And now, January is all used up. The month — full of moments mixing magic and mystery — is over.   And there’s nothing I can do about it.  Nothing at all.  Except live like it’s still January — by regarding this new month as a new little art festival of life.  So, then.

Hello, February.  How good of you to drop in for a visit.   No, I know you can’t stay long.  But have a seat, won’t you?  Now tell me — have you read any good books lately?  Seen any good movies?  Oh, “Hugo” — yes, of course, I saw “Hugo” the last day of January.  Of course, in 3-D!  Hey, any thoughts on who might win the Oscar for Best Picture?  Oh, yes, I know you know and can’t tell.  But, what?  You think that ending scene of “Hugo” — showing a close-up of Martin Scorsese’s automaton — looked a little like ‘Oscar’ too?   Oh, I can’t wait to see what happens.  What’s that?  You want to know what’s going on in my life?  Oh, I see — you’re just trying to change the subject — but I’ll be a gracious host by saying —  oh, lot’s.  Lot’s is going on.  And we’ve all month to talk about it.

Wilderness Sayings

20 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in The Great Outdoors

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Perhaps it’s coincidence.  Or nothing but tunnel vision that causes me to filter out what is not uppermost in my mind; when I have “X” on the brain I see  “X.”  And I see ‘X” everywhere. Sometimes to the exclusion of all else.  No “Y.”  No “Z.”  No whatever else — as it flies past my line of vision.

But whether coincidence or tunnel vision, over and over I find myself thinking along a certain path — to encounter another on my blog roll further down that particular thinking trail.  The connection feels important — not hokey, as with those sometimes, seemingly ‘spot-on’ sayings rising out of broken fortune cookies, that get read aloud by tables full of wisdom seekers.

Here’s one for instance — that comes out of a blog comment I wrote several days ago:

How strange to find you baptizing today’s post with the phrase “question without an answer” — on the day I should wake up realizing that unanswered questions are one of the many things to inspire me.  Maybe it’s Rilke’s urging – “Live the questions now.” — to that young poet of old that causes me to find life most meaningful and real in the face of unanswered questions… [Questions like:]

Is my youngest daughter’s growth on her thyroid benign..?
What comes after death?  [in thinking about my mother-in-law…]
What’s for supper?

No matter their weight, the questions themselves inspire me to live. Inch by inch. Day by day. Until I catch the glimmer of an answer…

Upon writing that list, I thought it an odd mix of questions — the first two hovering at the quick of life with the last feeling a bit frivolous and flighty.  But rather than play editor, I decided to leave the questions be, keeping the list just as it came to me.

It was just as well.  By the next day, I began seeing the questions as more connected than I’d first imagined.  And it came about as all reinterpretations of the past happen — by looking at the same “X” through a different set of lens.  In this case, it was more than one pair of lenses — for I looked at that list through the lens of a new event; and then the lens of a new experience, and finally, through the lens of one other than myself.

That the last came from a flock of birds who had just dropped in for supper — lending me their proverbial bird’s-eye view — well, this did throw me off-balance — enough to confess that even now, I can’t say whether these birds were Red-breasted Black Birds or Robins.  All I know is they were ravenous and noisy and feasting on the fruit of the Cherry Laurel outside my kitchen window.  It seemed every seat in my new bird cafe was filled.  As fast as a ‘table’ came open, a new bird came to takes its place.  No need to ask, “What’s for supper?  These birds had the good fortune to find my tree, so supper became ripe black cherries.

Of course, whatever food they happened upon that day — fitting their own particular bird’s palate — could have become a fine supper:  worms, birdseed or insects, perhaps.   From the bird’s perspective, any answer would have been a good answer — a life-giving answer — as long as the birds themselves didn’t become another creature’s supper — like some bird-watching fat cat, per chance.

As I watched them eat, I saw that life for these birds, as it is for any creature living in the wilderness, is a meal-by-meal affair.  It’s not a question of bird seed or worms.  It’s birdseed.  Or worms.  Or fruit.  Whatever they find.  These live an eat or be eaten sort of existence.  Everyday.  From the birds perspective, living into the answer of ‘what’s for supper’ is not a light-weight question at all — why it very much belonged to that quick of life list of questions left in my blog comment.

Still, the strange thing about yesterday, one I still need to think about, is this:  As I watched that bird-laden tree being picked over clean, I remember thinking how I’d never seen that tree look so alive before.  It shook.  And pulsed.  As birds came and went.  And while ravished by the wilderness, the tree lived on. Empty of fruit, the tree lives to bear again.  The tree lives and the birds live.  And I like how both the giver and the takers have happy endings.

And though I can’t say how — somehow, when I looked at that tree eaten yet not consumed, I imagined the tree being me.  And that instead of birds feasting on my fruit, it became unanswered questions which pecked away my fruitfulness.  Yes, it’s crazy, crazy, these thoughts of mine.  But then, I’ve always had a wild imagination. Perhaps these loose connections I’m making are nothing but tunnel vision at play. Yes.  Let’s just say that me being that tree — and my flock of questions being those birds — is nothing more than one of those odd life coincidences.