The 90th birthday party

Here are some photos of the time with my mom. Because of all the emotional work I've been doing lately (here is one example), I felt much more freedom and peace in being with my mom than ever before. It was a true blessing.

She had a good day, and she really enjoyed her cake and her presents. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that, in addition to her birthday presents, I gave her a copy of my book. She didn't remember anything about it. She looked amazed when she saw her daughter's name listed as a writer (and later when we went back to her room, she couldn't wait to show it to her roommate).

Here are a few photos. The guy in the second one is my younger brother Bob. He's single and lives in the same town as her, and he has taken the primary responsibility for looking after her.

A Milestone

This photo was taken a year ago.

My mom's 90th birthday was Friday. We're going to drive down today to have a party with her--lunch at a restaurant and cake / presents back at the nursing home.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Her Cross to Bear

This is based on something I saw in church Sunday during the reading of the Gospel. Obviously, I wasn't able to sketch or photograph the moment, so I had to construct this from bits of things I found on the Internet. I just didn't want to forget the image of the young girl with the shadow of the cross on her face, in case I want to use it again later.

Clicking makes the photo bigger.

Scar Tissue

Like a child

with scraped and crusted knees

who picks at the scabs

and pulls them away,

then watches the raw place ooze,

so do I poke at the scars

of my long-wounded heart,

fretting it will never heal.

A Visual Aid

I did this Thursday night as a psychological exercise. I call it "Why I Sketch."

The Lost Sketchbook

NOTE: It turns out that I couldn't leave my computer for maintenance as the store is shutting down on Monday for two weeks to do renovation, and they don't want to risk taking in computers that they might not be able to return before they close. I knew this was coming but thought I'd gone in far enough ahead of time. Oh well. I'll have to go back some time in June.

I'm going to start this post with a family story. My mother-in-law's father came from Poland, and her mother's family was from Czechoslovakia. Several years ago, my in-laws took a tour of Eastern Europe. One morning at breakfast, my mother-in-law turned to the waitress and suddenly blurted out the words for bread and butter in Czech. She had absolutely no memory of ever having spoken the language, which had lain dormant for decades and suddenly resurfaced when she was in the right circumstances.

That's how I feel about my sketching.

As you've no doubt figured out by now, I tend to be very self-analytical. For the last month or so, I've tried to understand how I could have gone for more than 30 years repressing something I love as much as art. My brain has been circling round and round, trying to analyze what happened and why. This post is as far as I've come with the analysis. I don't suppose it will have much meaning to anyone but me, but this story has been on my mind, so that's what I've decided to write about.

I drew all the time when I was a child. When I was only eight, I stunned my family by looking at a photograph I saw in the newspaper and drawing a recognizable portrait of the mass murderer Richard Speck. I followed that up with other portraits. And I drew all kinds of other things.

One thing that surprises me in looking back at my childhood is that my parents were actually fairly supportive of my art. They didn't have extra money . . . or much time for running me around, yet they enrolled me in art classes twice. Once was a summer school class and the other was a set of evening classes at the YMCA. Both of those were when I was about 10 or 11. My dad even thought I should consider becoming an artist when I grew up.

Then I started high school. In my school, kids who were college bound usually didn't take art. (Music was ok. Art wasn't. I don't know why.) From the time I was about three years old, my family had told me that I was supposed to go to college and that I needed to do well enough in school to earn scholarships. So I didn't even consider taking art classes. Instead I took four years of science and four years of math and four years of French, etc.

And I stopped drawing. At one point in my teens, I got a sketchpad and drew one picture I really loved. It was the silhouette of a bare winter tree with a vivid sunset behind it. Then I drew a sort of melodramatic picture of a woman weeping in a graveyard on a cliff, and I hated it because I couldn't get the figure to look right. I think I made only one or two other pictures in the sketchpad after that. I kept it for years and years afterward, but now I have no idea what happened to the sketchpad. I wish I did. I'd love to see that sunset drawing again.

I think through the years I found other, secondary ways of dealing with this interest/aptitude. I spent hours and hours drawing designs for my garden. When I worked for a publisher as a textbook editor, I drew up sketches of how I wanted the pages of my chapters to look instead of just leaving it up to the designer. I bought far too many clothes and planted more roses than I could care for because of my craving for color. At no time, did I realize that these activities were substitutes for the art I'd given up.

A couple of times I did try to take up sketching again. In the 1980s, I bought the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and I did maybe a third of the exercises. But after a few weeks I stopped. About ten years later, when I was in counseling for depression about being childless, I started drawing a lot of symbolic images to help me with the grief. But I stopped then too. I think in both of those cases, I was overwhelmed by how much I had to learn and how much time I'd lost and how far my execution was from what I wanted it to be. I've never dealt with being a beginner very well.

Now sketching is back, and I'm stunned at the importance it has assumed in my life. I feel as though I'm reclaiming a huge piece of my identity that I'd lost. And I keep wondering . . . why did I never miss it? How did I neglect to see that I was walking around for more than three decades with one arm bound tightly to my side?

I thought I knew myself better than that. It's been disconcerting to discover that I gave up something so important . . . and that in this case, I have only myself to blame for the loss.

I am so grateful to have this piece of my life returned to me, but I'm still not sure exactly where I'm going with it. It's not like I don't have enough other things to do. Making time for art has complicated an already complicated schedule.

On the other hand, I feel calmer when I'm sketching than I do during any other activity . . . including meditation. So I can't see myself giving it up again.

My class starts in two weeks, and I'm really looking forward to being with other people who are exploring the visual arts. Until then, I'm trying to experiment with different styles. I don't want to settle on one way of drawing too fast.

Maintenance

 

I have to take my computer in for maintenance today. In three-and-a-half years, it's never had an annual tune-up, and it also desperately needs more RAM for something I'm doing on my freelance assignment.

Sigh. I haven't been without it since the day I bought it. I think of it as my third arm. The next couple of days are going to be crazy making, but probably good for me. We'll still have Michael's computer in the house, but he is working extra hours today so we can both take a four-day weekend, so I don't think I'll be able to do much more than check my emails every few hours . . . as opposed to every 15 to 20 minutes. This is going to be like Reading Deprivation week in the Artist's Way, only much harder.

Anyway, I'll be more or less offline for a few days. See you on the backside.

Update on my brother

He flew back to Illinois Saturday, and he is safely ensconced at home near Rockford. I spoke to him yesterday. He says he feels great, and he certainly sounded good. He will probably be off about eight weeks. He has to recover enough to pass a Department of Transportation stress test. Now if he can just make the necessary lifestyle changes, we might be lucky enough to have him around for a while.

Thank you for all the prayers.

for my brother

While loading the dishwasher,

I listen bemused to the sharp click

of knife blade against fork tine,

the brighter ring of glass hitting porcelain,

and the dull clunk of aluminum on steel.

Rain taps a multitude of fingertips

softly on the skylight,

providing a gentle rhythm

for this domestic chorus,

so familiar, so homely,

so unlike the beeping monitors,

rattling trays, and roommates' chatter,

that surround you as you lie in the hospital,

wishing and straining to hear

a steady, dependable beat

from your now-untrustworthy heart.

Health News

Thank you for all the well wishes. My cold and cough are nearly gone. The trick now will be not to overdo and cause myself to relapse.

I would ask prayers for my brother Keith, who had a heart attack yesterday. (He is the one who did the video of "Casey at the Bat.") He is a long-distance trucker, and he was far from home in Colorado. But it happened shortly after he made a delivery to a store he goes to often, so at least he wasn't driving at high speed. He was able to call people he knew for help and he ended up in a very good hospital. He had a stint put it within an hour or two of the attack. Apparently, there are some other issues related to his heart, and he is also diabetic, so there will be a lot to deal with, I think.

Couch Time

I haven't got much to say. Because of my cold . . . and my asthma, . . . I've been fighting this uncontrollable hacking cough that depletes my interest in writing or thinking very hard. It also keeps me from doing much physical activity. So I've spent a lot of couch time the last few days. One thing I have been able to do without triggering coughing spasms that make me sound like Camille is sketching. It has the added benefit of helping me to be very calm and centered. So guess what I've been doing to keep myself quiet?

This first sketch is just a silly little rendering of a porcelain rooster I have. (In other words, no real animals were harm in the making of this drawing.)

It's still tulip season here. I took a photo of some of the tulips in my front yard and then sketched these:

This is from a photo of a birdhouse hanging in my river birch.

Still four weeks to go before I start my class. I'm trying to brush up on my skills before then. (I am such an over achiever.)

Hope you're all well.

The View from my Office Window

Sorry the photo is blurry. I had to take it through my window.

My office looks out over the front yard, and I have my birdbath and bird feeders in about eight feet from the window. I put out new seed yesterday, so I've been getting quite a show.

Lots of goldfinches eating upside down at the thistle seed feeder.

A couple of male house finches fighting over food.

A male red-winged blackbird displaying his red epaulettes and stalking a female (who didn't seem too interested).

A male robin attacking red-winged blackbirds for coming too close to the robin's nest.

And miscellaneous visits from the female robin, a male cardinal, mourning doves, brown-headed cowbirds, white-crowned sparrows, and house sparrows. All of this just today. And I got to see two house sparrows mating a couple of days ago.

It's like an avian soap opera out there. I guess it really is spring.

P.S. Thanks for the kind anniversary thoughts and good wishes for my health. I'm still sick, but I'm hoping it will ease up soon. (I have mild asthma, so whenever I get a cold, it digs in for the long haul.)

Nineteen Years and Counting . . .

Today is our wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, I've been sick since Saturday so our plans to go out have to be postponed. However, Michael did bring home a dozen roses yesterday.

Here is how we looked 19 years ago. And below that is a picture of Michael all dressed up for a charity gala he went to last week.

Hasn't he aged well?

And now for something silly:

What I'm "Produce"-ing

I did this sketch of pears last night by following a lesson in an instruction book I have. I like it ok, but I don't love it . . . mainly because I worked from a photo and used the colors the author said to instead of looking at a real pear and drawing what I see.

This morning when I awoke, all I wanted to do was to draw the onions in my pantry. I could see them in my mind and couldn't wait to get them on paper. (That's not to imply I drew from memory. I diligently sat with the onions on the table in front of me.)

P.S. You can click on the pictures is you want a bigger view.

Welcome to the farm

A few seedling pix in honor of May Day.

This one shows basil to the left and cucumbers to the right.

These sprouts will be yellow squash plants.