The Fairy Rooms on Linden Street

Recently a friend asked me to help her save the memories of the fairy rooms built at her dining room table by her granddaughter.  Boxes and fabric and paper and shiny odds and ends were glued and snipped and fashioned together to create the tiny rooms.  A kitchen with three tiny black pans hanging on the wall, a fancy bed strewn with pillows, cozy sleeping lofts, a red-hot crinkly paper fire in the fireplace (just like in one of the Beatrix Potter books), tiled and popsicle stick parquet floors, an outside shower, lace curtains, and a flat-screen TV forever tuned to the Nature Channel.  The fairy rooms were displayed at one end of my friend’s dining room, looking lovely, if not a little shabby and slowly gathering dust as the granddaughter is now 15 years old and has put away childish things.  We decided to create a book as a Christmas present for the granddaughter, you can view it here by clicking the link. 

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"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely..."

It's taken years to get here, to a place where I know I am someone, valued, worthy, the journey has been long and arduous and I have to admit that I was sometimes helped by people whom I hope I never have to see again. Response to situations out of survival, response to being bullied, ignored, disrespected... realizing that it was time to rise above all that, to recognize my own given-at-birth self worth and go from there. Of course there has also been the loving help of friends and family, reminding me of what they love about me and the help of poets who have never met me, yet who write as if they have seen straight through to the lonely heartspaces I have nurtured all this time. Read Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"... 

You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees 

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body 

love what it loves. 

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 

Meanwhile the world goes on. 

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees, 

the mountains and the rivers. 

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 

are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination, 

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-- 

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things. 

...and weep with relief and gratitude because you know she's right. I printed this poem out on a tiny piece of paper, put it in a silver pill box I found of my grandmother's and strung it with beads on a necklace. I wear it on days when I need to. We're here on this planet to take care of each other. In order to do that, we know we need to be aware of our self worth, of our "place in the family of things". How could it be otherwise? No one gets to tell us that we are not worthy to breathe this crisp autumn air, to wet our feet at the salty seaside, to take the hand of the one we love, to marvel at the beauty and mystery of the glowing moon. I wish I could give you the gift of love right here and now, it's here for the taking, the love of self, the opening it creates to allow others in, the ever expanding ripple effect of remembering and keeping your place in the family of things. 

E.E.Cummings (1894-1962) says "here's to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap" 

Our old Ollie

The kids and I had to say goodbye to our old dog Ollie last month, 12 years of gamboling and frolicking with his long poodle legs and then he slowed way way down and then the vet said it was really time.  Beth and John who had owned Ollie’s mother brought roses.  I hung them to dry when they were done with their shiny show off stage.

Something new and different!

Ahh, the power of being in charge of your own blog. I'm in charge! I can write about whatever I want! I can discuss everything from lavender to fireworks to being laid off! Supper clubs! The weather! The sky's the limit! Having said that, I am introducing a side of me you may not know. Amateur artist and appreciator of art, the whole wide world wonderful range of it… from Matisse’s “Purple Robe and Anemones” to the magnolia blossoms unfolding outside my window… to the way the evening sun last week illuminated the spring colors in a kind of cinematic glory.

 I create vignettes. They are throughout my apartment, here and there, having come to life over the past several years as I have steadily figured out just what it is that makes me happy.

This particular vignette is called The Lady in the Crane. That's a Monopoly piece coming out of the cup, you know the one, the man on the horse.

Supper club

I joined a supper club. At my church. Somehow that sounds very hot-dish, sensible shoes, permed hair, coffee in flowered cups. Someone in their 50s. Oh wait, I am in my 50s. I actually looking forward to it, the set-up is that we meet at each other's houses once a month and everyone brings something. I'm bringing oatmeal-raisin cookies because I'm really good at baking and not so confident about the rest of the courses. My son's not coming but I'm broiling him some chicken. I had to ask at the meat market how to do this and she looked at me as if I was asking them if chicken was edible in the first place. When she realized I really did need direction, she very gently and not even a little bit sarcastically said, "You just put it under the broiler." She suggested some olive oil and salt and pepper, she pushed for paprika, onion powder and garlic powder but I think I'll keep it simple.

Temperature change

Last week, even my bones were warm. I went across the street to the little garden the park ranger is letting me take care of and the daffodils and early lilies were taking no mind of the foot of mulch the park dumped on them last fall. Spikes of green underfoot, tiny fists of buds on the stiff hydrangea stalks, even the coral bells (which I was sure would be forever drowned under the weight) were sending their first scalloped leaves through to test the air. Back home, outside my window, white blossoms of the star magnolia tree multiplied by the day, filling up the lower pane of the glass with shimmering petals. Even after the sun went down, their whiteness drank up every bit of available light and they were faintly visible in the deep indigo evening. Then, the New England weather, which perhaps had been distracted with the task of planning a long and miserably humid summer, remembered it had a reputation to uphold and WHAM BAM. I had to turn the heat back on, lower the few storms I had cheerfully raised the week before and put on an extra blanket. In the morning, the magnolia flowers no longer held their faces to the sun but rather hung, somewhat pitifully, from the ends of their branches. They reminded me now of old ladies' hankies, soft brown stains from too many dabbings at a damp neck, pulled from a long forgotten pocket. When the tree releases its remnants of bloom, they'll go in an afternoon of breezes, looking like a snow squall as they fall to the grass and street. For now, though fragile and old, they're still dancing and waving in the cool morning.

sad and worried

Laid off... again... third time in under two years. Where's NPR to put a tape recorder in my home so my less-than-stellar work life can be broadcast for the whole nation. Today is my last day of work... so bittersweet. At least I know I can go around the corner on a weekend and visit these new and funny friends I've made. I'm soooo worried about finding a job. I have an interview in the morning for a family-school liaison position. I want to go in there and wow them. I know I'd be really good at this job. I've been looking around on line at other family-school liaisons and what they are offering so that I can be fluent in the subject by tomorrow morning. I'm anxious. Trying to stave off disappointment on the other side of not getting the job. Feeling like crying. Snapped at my son this morning and then cried and said I was worried about not having a job. He came over to me and rubbed my back a little and kissed me on the shoulder saying what a good worker I was and that he was sure the interview would go really well.

I'm thinking that maybe I should send the job description to my sister on the West coast so she can go out in the yard and hold it up to the California sunshine and maybe that will work some magic. Or maybe I should bury a copy in the back yard and burn sage over it.

Maybe I need to get a grip.

I will prevail no matter what although I will stop short of selling my little pumpkin on the street corner.