Tag: art

Gay Uncles

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I took a break from organizing and donating crafting supplies to begin the task of categorizing photos. The entire surface of the bed in the guest room is covered in boxes and baskets of photos. This room, the guest room, is my most favorite. It is decorated exactly the way I want it – simple white linens, an antique cherry night stand on one side of the bed and a filing cabinet hidden under a round top and layers of white linens on the other. The headboard is painted white-ish and gold – perfectly distressed – there is a cream colored bookcase, a dark oak hutch, white linen curtains and a dark wood chair. The art on the walls consists of bird prints and tiny pieces of original art I purchased on trips abroad. It is simple and clean (most of the time) and it’s where I go to breathe. The one room that is almost always neat and clean. I miss that feeling, so I’m digging in to unearth my little island of calm.

The photos are a mix of recent, with vibrant colors and uniform sizes and old yellowed, black and white with creases and cardboard backing. I love them all. The fresh memories and the bits of history I’m left to make up in the older ones. It’s those stories waiting to be told that I get lost in.

In these various piles there are two secrets closely held: one in a brown vinyl travel bag, the other in a tan photo album. They belong to my uncles. The twin great-uncles that I loved so dearly.

There is nothing scandalous hidden here. No pornographic images, no confessions or blackmail. The memories and photos are powerful in their simplicity. Each had many photos of the two of them together, they were very close, just standing side by side smiling for the camera. They were gay, both of them, though the opera singer would never claim his preferences. His brother, discreet, but out, would share his twin’s secrets with my mother and I after his death.

They weren’t really secrets.

The photos they left behind hold images of men seated in living rooms and kitchens, laughing, smiling, enjoying themselves. There are couples, it seems, only if the time is taken to go through them all. The same two men are standing or seated side by side with their arms around each other like “pals” on more than one occasion, in different clothes and maybe a change in hair style or length. These were relationships.

Tucked in with these photos are newspaper clippings of accomplishments of each other and their friends, their family.

What is so striking about these photos is nothing. Yet they were held in bottom drawers of dressers under winter clothes. I imagine them filling a roll of film half with these photos and the other half with shots of them with family and women so as not to arouse suspicion at the one-hour photo processing center in their home towns. Or even driving the unprocessed film far enough away. They would carefully cull out the photos and place the special ones in albums to be viewed often and probably alone or just with the subjects contained within. The other photos would be found loose in a kitchen drawer or in the envelope they came in, resting on the coffee table. Or maybe discarded.

So much of their lives were manipulated and restrained for the comfort of others. These secrets and maybe lies would ultimately undo them.

The opera singer, became well known in the opera community of New York City. He was married three times to different women, powerful artists in their own rights. I always suspected he was gay. He was just this side of flamboyant – dramatic perhaps, that was his job after all – and he never had children. Never wanted them. He was happy to be an uncle and he was an awesome one.

But his secrecy made him sick.

Ultimately the “not gay” opera singing uncle would succumb to AIDS toward the end of the eighties. He wasted away. He had denied his actual existence in favor of the persona he thought everyone wanted. And it killed him.

The other uncle lived much more quietly, pursuing the arts differently. He would work in Europe for Fortuny, then in Boston. Later he would open a lighting store, then a florist shop. He would drink and make the unfortunate decisions that come along with alcoholism. It was not easy living inauthentically. Liquor helped.

Later in life he would give it up. He met and fell in love with someone a decade younger who was sober but infected. They never had sex, he told me, but they were affectionate and madly in love. There are photos that make this obvious. Sweet, gentle images of the two of them engaged in conversation, smiling, listening.

But AIDS would take him too. They both knew it would eventually come and were as prepared as anyone can be for such profound, gradual loss.

There would be no other lovers. Instead he turned his life over to AA. For over 30 years my sweet uncle would take in people in the “the program” who needed a soft place to land for a while. He had inherited his father’s house and there were two bedrooms and a Florida room surrounded on two sides with jalousie windows and a back door. He moved into the Florida room to allow the residents of the other rooms some privacy. That’s just how he was.

The house was a very small typical Florida home built sometime in the 40s and 50s. Just one small bathroom, a large kitchen with a window over the sink with a wide sill that my great grandmother would place peanut butter crackers on for the local squirrel population, feeding some of them by hand and a living room big enough to fit an upright piano. His parents had lived in it over 30 years. He moved in with his father to help take care of him in his later years, to be sure he took his meds and didn’t drive after too many cocktails. His dad “knew” but it wasn’t discussed. His mother had passed ten years prior and she would not allow it to be spoken about. She knew too, they were her babies, the youngest of six by about 12 years. But still, you just didn’t talk about such things.

He would, much later after his beloved dog died, check himself into an assisted care facility from which he would not emerge alive. He was beginning to forget things and didn’t want to be a burden. He knew what was coming, he had seen it in every one of his older siblings, except his twin who would escape that fate by dying too young.  Less than a year after he moved out of his tiny Florida home he went to sleep and didn’t wake up. I’m pretty sure he planned it that way.

Their lives were rich, they mattered. They loved wholly and completely. They each left a legacy of art, beauty, laughter and love.

They were great, great-uncles and sifting through their photographic pasts fills my heart with compassion and sadness in equal measure for the lives they lived and the ones they hid.

 

There’s a Monster in My Closet

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There are days that I feel like the purging will never end. I worry that I will get the house “set” and decide I need to rearrange or pick up a new hobby that brings more stuff in. I wonder what would happen if I just decided to pitch all the CDs. I toy with the idea of emptying one room completely and mindfully putting each thing back in after a ridiculous amount of consideration.

Then I realize I’m just in the middle of this process, not even quite in the middle of the year I’ve allotted myself. All of these things will resolve themselves in time.

Today I dove back into my room. The once sparse and organized closet with a handful of projects is threatening to buckle shelves and blow the doors open with the addition of the crafting supplies of mom’s I somehow I had to have. More project ideas presented themselves to me and now I am left with the task of sorting and storing. Do I purchase organizational boxes, as I have all but vilified, or do I make it work some other way, or do I let most of the stuff go?

In addition to all the closet stuff there are piles of papers on the desk that need filing or shredding; books that need to be reshelved or maybe even released; CDs to be burned; and matted photos that will likely be given away.

I am ready to let go of the photography for photography’s sake which has led me to this little thought spiral crises. If I can so cavalierly toss away photos that I once loved and was happy with, what’s next?

This was my inheritance.

My mother loved to craft and create and she had enough supplies to make something for everyone on the planet. She would create one thing she loved then decide to make 200 more of them and then be disappointed when they didn’t sell. I don’t want to go down that road. Any more.

I don’t want to do those artsy craftsy things I love for money. I will absolutely still accept financial compensation for things I make, but it cannot be why I make things. It was those things she made first that were magical. Each subsequent item was not as special. Maybe it was smaller, with less or more embellishment or somehow skimped on. Maybe it was just that there was now way more than one that it lost its magic. Whatever the case, I think I get it now. When I would make a piece of jewelry for myself it was always the first thing that sold. If I tried to make something for someone else in mind it fell short.

But back to the stuff of this room.

On the floor scattered in no particular pattern are half filled boxes and well-meaning piles that point to some sort of attempt to organize.

There are also three bookcases that will need to be culled with a strict hand. And my own files that need to be thinned of last year’s papers.

But one thing at a time. One ball of yarn in a bag to go to a friend. A book set aside for another friend. A small pile of photos started for gifting.

As much as I want to complete it all today, tidy up my room and sit down to watch a movie, I know the sweetness and the lessons are in the time.

Oh, I’m still going to watch that movie, the stuff will keep.

 

For Now

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When I committed to the year-long purge in January, I truly just wanted to lighten up, get rid of stuff. I felt bogged down by things. I couldn’t find what I needed or remember where I put something because there was just too much. I knew I’d come up against obstacles like time and urgency, that I would resist and that organizing one space would require nearly every other space to become disorganized for a time.

I agreed with myself that I would trust the process and not abandon it. Turns out abandonment is part of the process, but only for a short time.

I find myself in that space of complete disarray. One room (three if you count the two bathrooms) is neat and clean without anything “extra” in it. The rest of the house is in organizational flux. Boxes have been pulled in from the garage to go through and purge in the living room. My room has been the repository of all things mom, along with the I’m-just-not-sure-where-to-put-this-so-it-will-go-here stuff. For now. The guest room bed is covered in old family photos waiting patiently to be organized, the kitchen is in constant use and various stages of purging and we will not be addressing the dining room here today. That is the work space of Larry and a complete health hazard.

Back to that tiny little sentence above: For now. I’m against it.

There are some instances when you have to do something just for the moment, but when it’s announced, “I’ll just put this here for now,” I know there is a deeper pathology at work. Even if I’m the one announcing it. It means, this thing that I’m placing here does not yet have a home, so I’m gonna lay it here while I think about that. Then forget about it.

We are working hard at finding homes for everything we’ve decided to keep. It is much easier for me to let go of things than it is Larry. He’s afflicted with that I-may-need-this-some-day gene. I prefer to pass things along I am no longer using, sometimes to people I know, often to a charity store. But sometimes I hold on too.

Something happens when you take possession of a thing. It becomes yours. And because it’s yours it now has value, but it’s just a thing. Even that 3 carat diamond ring is just a thing (not mine, don’t have one). The value is financial and emotional. The monetary value slides up and down depending on the emotional attachment.

Let’s take Grandma’s set of dishes that we use every Thanksgiving and Christmas, that she used on special occasions. They’re fine china we’ve been told, even says so on the bottom. They’re priceless, clearly. But in actuality, with the missing gravy boat and lid to the soup tureen the set is only worth about $50. At the most. It feels insulting. It’s the emotional grab. In truth if I were shopping for dishes I wouldn’t even consider these, they’re not my style. But when I use them they feel special.

This is the process. Each item is to be considered. This is where I am. I have culled the items that hold no sway – clothes, books I’ve read, unused greeting cards, Rubbermaid food containers and various other items, now I’m down to necessity and heritage.

Letting go of the things does not mean I am letting go of the memories or even tradition. Truly if I had 15 minutes to grab whatever was meaningful to me and get out of my home, after my pets it would be my computer, camera and artwork done by family members.

Is the myth of the memory more important than the freedom and space of letting it go? Is being bogged down by DVDs, old letters, family heirlooms more grounding and nurturing than wide open space in which to be creative and light?

I’m getting to it, the right balance for me. For now.

 

 

Inheritance

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Tomorrow it will be a month since my mother passed away. It was unexpected. Nearly a decade ago she had surgery to replace a heart valve. After that she had lots of energy and spunk but she would be on medicine for the rest of her life. It is that medication that is likely responsible for her death. “A catastrophic bleed.” A stroke, she simply laid down in bed one night really tired and never regained consciousness – it’s how she wanted to go, but probably not when.

I share this with you not to elicit sympathy or use her life as a cautionary tale, but by way of explanation for my absence from the interweb. And to share a little story about a lot of stuff.

In the weeks since she died I have been handling her “estate” and its contents. She had no money, was on social security and Medicaid, but her modest two-bedroom apartment told a different story.

My mother was not a hoarder, but she did have an affinity for all things crafty and written. She had three enormous bookshelves packed with books – floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall, sometimes two rows deep. She had one bedroom, the larger one, dedicated to crafts. She sewed, knitted, made jewelry, painted, drew, fantasized, dreamed and created all sorts of things in this space. She had 5 bookcases in this room filled with fabric, beads, yarn, paper and more books. Two desks for working. And when those filled up she opened a table.

Her closet and dresser were packed with clothes, good quality, known brands, yet she often complained that she needed new clothes. She had items stored in her kitchen that she never used. At least a dozen cups full of notepads and pens, crochet hooks and feathers, dotted the landscape of her home. She had multiples of personal care items like deodorant and soap – different brands, not like she bought them in bulk – just in case, I suppose.

Dealing with her home and its contents provided a welcome distraction from grief for a while, but in the larger picture it was full of life lessons on prosperity, abundance and stuff. It felt like a cruel joke at first: this is my year of letting go of stuff, of purging my home and now I have added a whole (almost) two bedroom apartment to the mix. It wasn’t about me of course, only it was.

It was a lesson for me. So many lessons, some still being revealed.

I brought a lot of her things home, but I was also able to off-load a ton of the fabric and craft supplies to a crafters guild she belonged to, I left some furniture behind for her neighbor and donated some clothes and kitchen items to the local charity thrift shop. But I still filled 6 car loads, an SUV and one of those super tall vans.

It overwhelms me, but it was very clear to me that I wanted to take my time with what I culled. And I’m glad that I am. There’s not much of monetary value, but a lot of memories and clues to the woman that was my mother.

I was completely prepared after this “year-long purging project” to chuck all my personal things and never look back. That could still happen, but as I paw through the personal effects of a life that spanned 75 years, and a handful of states from coast to coast, I’m starting to recognize value in things.

Not all things. I am not changing my tune completely.

But finding the book my mother read to me as a child stirred the sweetest of memories. All the bad artwork my brother and I created as children was saved, as were a tiny outfit or two, a blanket, locks of hair.

I uncovered a poem my grandmother wrote and some of her artwork. Tucked in a folder I found an autobiography my mother had written for admittance to ministerial school that revealed a few things I did not know. And a mountain of cards and letters from my mother’s friends showed her to be much loved.

While it’s true the memories do not live in these things, they do serve as a touchstone that creates a picture of the person who elected to hold onto them. These things convey what was important to her, what mattered. It’s a comfort.

I have already released many items. I just needed to touch them, to take my time with them, learn something from them, investigate. But now, they have served their purpose. I am slower in giving up photos and items she made and maybe I’ll always hold onto them. I have set aside a few items I know she particularly loved. But I have also been able to gift specific books and items to my friends who are a perfect match.

I have let go of the self-judgment that would have forced me to toss them before I was ready. My mission for my own home. Instead I am learning the value of a few items to bring comfort.

My mission for my home, even with her stuff in it, is still the same. I am going to go through everything and release that which does not serve me or bring me happiness. This was never about living in an empty home, but about lightening up, I just have more stuff to go through now.

It’s a process, a journey, and like all journey’s it’s made much sweeter by taking time and moving mindfully.

 

 

 

 

Mattering

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I’ve been absent for about 10 days. I have a really good reason: someone close to me passed away. It was unexpected and sad, but ultimately beautiful and freeing. For her.

I, on the other hand, have been gifted the bulk of her possessions. And it’s a lot. She had a two bedroom apartment stuffed with books, creative project pieces and parts, clothes and the normal belongs of a life richly lived.

The Universe can be douchily ironic. Just as I am in the process of purging and letting go I am presented with a whole house of stuff to manage.

I am not being intentionally insensitive, it is just that I am on the business end of handling this parting. Grief comes in waves mixed with laughter and sweet memories. For now, though, the sorting of that life is the task at hand.

It’s always a process.

In sorting through the markers of her life I am both compelled to keep special tokens and simultaneously light a match and walk away.

There will be no fires.

At first glance the items surrounding me point to a life of abundance. But on closer inspection I find evidence of something more akin to lack and fear. Where one stick of deodorant would suffice I find 4. All the same. Five tall bookcases line the walls of the craft studio. They are packed with scraps of fabric, beads, books on creative endeavors, sewing materials, patterns, paper, glue. There are two computers, a sewing machine and a closet stuffed with mystery. A million tiny notes are scattered about. Half as many projects begun then abandoned.

Elsewhere in the home 3 large bookcases are full of books, sometimes two rows deep, a few photos and other mementos dot the shelves. Stacks of books rest next to the spots most frequented, magazines teeter on tables, the freezer is stuffed with food, the refrigerator the same. The walls are covered in artwork and photos with still more framed pieces leaning against walls waiting for a vacancy. And appliances requested sit in boxes unused.

It is a very accurate representation of its occupant: homey, messy in that creative way and lived in. It’s welcoming and feels safe.

But it’s a lesson. In stuff, in love, in fear, in recognizing what is necessary. In recognizing what is true.

I will continue to sort through belongings, donating many to the faceless masses, gifting some to friends of the deceased and keeping a touchstone or two.

There are boxes full of love – letters, cards, photos of trips and good times – that were perhaps felt and then forgotten. Mementos of troubleless times. (I will study these.) But they were not powerful enough to convince the beholder of her worth. Perhaps for a moment, but long term this sense of ‘not-good-enoughness’ would take a seat beside her.

Receiving things, temporarily created peace. Until they didn’t and more things would be desired, procured. She wasn’t a hoarder, but may have been heading in that direction.

The biggest gift I am getting from this experience will not take up any space in my home. It is the recognition of my own self-worth, my place in the universe. That I matter.

She mattered too, so much more than she could accept and believe. She heard the words over and over again from so many people how she had made a life-changing difference to them, how she had given them peace when they thought none existed, how she awakened in them a creative spirit they didn’t know they had. But she didn’t receive those words, she didn’t integrate them. She wore them for a short time, shared them with those close to her as external evidence of her worth, then shed them like dead skin.

In sorting and purging her things I am infected with a sense of melancholy. In purging my own things and letting go I am left bare, all raw nerves and sensitive teeth. It’s necessary. At times I am elated and giddy. It’s a cleansing with far deeper implications than a tidy home. It’s a liberation. And it’s a process.

 

 

Personal History

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I am lost in a sea of personal history. Memories and emotions gently rock my present, nudging my attention this way and that.

My room: the repository of my past. Photos from as far back as 1800 and something. My great-grandparents parents photos and maybe their parents too. Some I know, some are magical ghosts of my DNA.

My room: the sanctuary of my creative aspirations. Over 20 boxes of hundreds of beads – many semi-precious stones that I could just caress for hours. I am partial to rubies, they feel mysterious and rich. Aquamarine gives me space, I can’t help but take a deep breath in when working with them. And sapphires are the keepers of  secrets. In boxes in my closet are unpainted canvases, paper cut for projects forgotten and photos I’ve taken and left to die in the back of a drawer.

My room:  the organizational nerve center. Four file drawers hold the remnants of an abandoned organizational system, files numbered and lettered but empty. Files full of bills paid, places to visit, the history of my pets and cherished documents that allow me to wander the earth.

My room: holder of tiny sacred spaces. An altar that continues to grow even though there appears to be no more room, sits atop a large bookcase. As I was counting it I thought I’d find new homes for some of the excess Buddhas and rocks, but there appears to be no such thing as excess Buddhas.

This was to be the last room on my list but something compelled me to “knock it out.” It’s been a week. More than. I’m almost done counting. That was supposed to be the easy part. But to count photos you must touch them and I don’t know about you, but I must also look at them. And as I do I am mentally eliminating some and finding purposes for others. I am sorting and organizing memories as if I can come back to them when I’m ready.

There are just a few boxes of photos left to count and then all the jewelry supplies. I have set a goal to complete the counting by the end of this week – Sunday. In the meantime I am surrounded by a mine field of unfinished projects. And it’s creating heaviness, filling spaces that I need free and open. Cards that need to be cut, photos to be sorted and culled, letters to be read and overall purging. This is just round one.

As I sort through the stuff that has built me I wonder what I am really hoping to gain by this process. My goal from the outset been space and time. I want to be able to walk into my home and not feel compelled to straighten up, but I sense something much deeper at work.

Urgency. I carry with me, deep in my gut, this sense of needing to get things done. Organizing, categorizing, sorting then storing. Get it done, check it off. But when it’s done will I be sad? Will I look for the next thing to accomplish no matter how trivial? Maybe that need will abate once things are ordered. Maybe not. This is the work of the process. This is why to abandon it or hold fast to rules would dilute the outcome.

It’s cranky and itchy, the process, but in a most informative way. It’s doing its work on me and I like, don’t like it. I think that means it’s working.

Full of Dirt and Good Intentions

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Since I was already sitting there, on the back patio, I decided to catalog my back yard.

My criteria for “stuff” seems to be anything I could pack up and move with me. So not the trees or plants rooted in the earth, or even the stone patio we set, but the items I usually bring in when a hurricane threatens to blow through, are what made the list.

I have always wanted to landscape my tiny back yard so that I couldn’t really see the fence surrounding it. I’ve been here 16 years (it was supposed to be five) and this has not happened on purpose or through the beauty of managed overgrowth. But I still love my organically messy back yard. We planted native trees when we moved in alongside the existing orange tree and rubber tree, so it’s much more lush, but still not the garden of my imagination.

It is small. My porch, which is huge, probably eats up half my yard. If it weren’t for the mosquitoes, I’d probably do away with the screen that divides the two spaces. But, Florida.

Because of my greenish-brown thumb, I employ a lot of potted plants – 30 to be exact. This way, I can move plants that are floundering to a different spot. More shade, more sun, eastern exposure, southern. There are a few of these in the front yard as well, but I’m getting a head of myself.

I have a small scrolly table with 4 chairs I inherited from my great uncle. It’s aluminum I think and the paint is peeling, but maybe that’s part of its charm. On it is a collection of those pots I mentioned, full of nothing but dirt and good intentions. In addition there is a hand made decorative plate I got from somewhere, filled with water. We have a bird bath in the front yard and the doves love it. The doves also love our back yard so I thought I would treat them to a second option. Since “installing” the back yard bird bath I have hosted not only doves but blue jays, cardinals, titmouses (titmice?), finches, generic brown birdies and squirrels. If I sit very still on the patio I can watch them drink and bathe without being noticed.

Then there are the chairs. Not the ones that match the table, the other 4 randomly strewn throughout the tiny space like some modern art installation. An art critic may note the longing of the two empty chairs seated next to one another, waiting, waiting for two lovers to return. Or the solitary chair facing east as if it’s former occupant sat anticipating the sunrise each morning. I’m not sure what this critic would say about the aqua chair with peeling paint and no seat.

I have a favorite sculpture I bought many years ago that is made from soldered metal parts that once belonged to other things and now through the mind of a Frankenwelder it has become a beautiful rusty bird. I’m a little attached to it.

Like the patio, I could let all of this go – except my bird maybe – but I enjoy it while it’s here. The extra chairs? those could find another home. Between all the chairs outside and all the seating on the patio I could comfortably seat 22.

Aside from the pots of plants and dirt, there are a few stone statues – one of an angel, one a monkey – a plaster St. Francis, cause he loves all the critters of course, an unattached panel of fence hiding out of sight and a stack of slate tiles meant for something greater. Oh and there’s a tiny table between the two chairs for those lovers so they’ll have somewhere to put their tea. Because surely they would have tea. Or maybe wine.

Total number of items in the back yard: 65

 

Where to Begin…

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Okay. So I’ve made this decision: The Year of Living Mindfully or Consciously. Or The Year of Counting All My Stuff. Or The Year of the Purge. Now where do I start? How?

As I meander from room to room in my not at all large home I become overwhelmed with all that I know is hidden. Desks, chests, cabinets, closets, even vintage suitcases are home to “things”. And some stuff is flat out mocking me by boldly sitting out for all to see. I have to start somewhere.

This is where most people get stuck. Where I am in danger of procrastination.

The whole mess put all together, especially if I start thinking about the black hole that is the garage, pushes me backward onto the couch in analysis paralysis. I look around for clues. Stare blankly at a plant. Gaze outside hoping for a distraction. I can clearly see the organization necessary, the putting back of things. I see that this needs to go here and that needs to go there, but the thought of pulling stuff out of their secret little hidey-holes and exposing them to daylight makes me sleepy.

I could start the old-fashioned way: pick a drawer or small closet to tackle first. Use a timer so I don’t overwhelm myself. This would be the advice of the Fly Lady and countless other organization gurus.

I could take the advice of Marie Kondo in the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, and compartmentalize my stuff. Start with clothes first, then papers, books, etc. Her strategy is to pull all the pieces of one category together, touch each one, hold it up and ask yourself if you love it, or something along those lines. I did this with my clothes, books, papers, then shifted to spaces like the kitchen. Mostly it worked but I got a little stuck when it came to art supplies, artwork, and memorabilia.

Or I could use the Minimalists tactic of boxing up everything I own. Everything. And as I need something take it out of the box. After a month or two, whatever I didn’t pull from the boxes gets donated or otherwise released.

Or I could simply keep researching the best way and avoid the actual work.

I need to think and start small, the garage IS NOT the place to begin, or even look, until I get this project underway.

I will start with my master bedroom. It’s a simple space. Clean. I’ll begin with the contents of my bedside table drawer. I never open it except to retrieve my Nook charger. But there are other treasures in there.

Or, no. As I contemplate this I am sitting on my back patio. The weather is perfect, there’s a breeze and my bird friends have come to sip from the makeshift bird bath on top of the table. The table, birds and bird bath are all outside the screened enclosure, but the patio itself, inside the screen, is home to 675 square feet of hiding places. THIS is where I’ll begin. Stay tuned…

Make Love, Not Gossip

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path IMG_3984Today on Facebook I read a post that deflated me. It wasn’t sad, no animals were harmed and it wasn’t full of needless expletives. But it spoke of an epidemic of ignorance of who we truly are that is so pervasive in our society that I had to respond to it. Only I didn’t. Not directly. Instead I posted my thoughts about it on my own newsfeed without identifying the source or any details.

I wanted to respond but I knew it would only expand the negativity, poking the bear, rather than disarming the situation or change anything for the better.

The short of it is this: There was a video of a celebrity doing something  positive, but because this celebrity is controversial all the remarks on this person’s post were derogatory and downright mean. They were personally attacking someone they didn’t even know personally.

It may be fun and even feel a little powerful, if you can recruit others in a gossip fest, but in the end it is waste of precious life force. Making it the most harmful and hurtful to the ones gossiping.

Not that I haven’t done this. Hasn’t everyone? What I believe we’re doing is recognizing our perceived failings in another and directing our self-loathing outward as if that will rid us of it. At our lowest points, we draw conclusions and make assumptions about others all in the service of our own fragile egos, trying to elevate our self-esteem by pointing out the shortcomings of another. They are the mirror for our fear that we are not enough.

What if every time we caught ourselves in a verbal eye roll, or hissing like a snake on our keyboards or phone, we just stopped? What if we directed all that venom at ourselves? Because that’s what we’re really doing. That celebrity will feel none of that acrimony, yet those sending daggers feel EVERY bit of it.

We have the option and the power to  transmute that energy into something beautiful and real. Re-channel it. Do some art. Write in your journal. Take a walk in nature. Breathe. Look at the sky.

What would happen, do you think, if all the news media began reporting on charitable organizations and those being helped? What if celebrity magazines only photographed and spotlighted companies and individuals, and yes, celebrities making a difference in their city, town or country? What if the newspaper was full of stories about people helping other people, kittens and dogs being rescued or rescuing, or illustrations on the power of love?

Idealistic? Of course. Unrealistic? No.

I don’t think we are here to tear each other down – even from a distance – in order to lift ourselves up. It doesn’t work. We are meant to uplift one another, to make things better for each other. There is a quote, or prayer, really, by Marianne Williamson that I have always loved, “Help me remember that my job is to love the world back to health.”

How our choices and words might be so different if that were our job description.

Scraps of History

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shower curtain IMG_2191One of the quickest way I find everyday enchantment is to closely look at the belongings in my home. I recall  the meaning of each piece, the feeling behind it when I purchased or received it or imagine its life before it came to live with me.

My little moment of enchantment today has to do with a shower curtain.  I have an affinity for old, worn, tattered things; a well-loved quilt, a step stool with peeling paint, cracked sepia toned photos – even if I don’t know who’s in them.

Years ago while my mom and I were haunting thrift stores and antique shops we started picking up bits of fabric, mostly napkins and handkerchiefs. We had no idea what we were going to do with them, but that has never stopped us before.

It wasn’t until months or maybe even a year later that I uncovered these hand sewn squares while organizing a closet. Slowly an idea began to form. I knew why I had gathered them. I picked out all the whitish ones without stains and set them aside. When I found a hand crocheted lace roll I began to assemble the piece in my head.

My mother had just started quilting. You should know that the women in my family tend to migrate from craft project to creative endeavor and back again. Painting, cut paper, cross stitching, sewing, jewelry making, quilting and anything remotely artsy. At this particular time, mom had discovered quilting.

I handed her all my little whitish squares and requested a patchwork shower curtain. We used the roll of tan lace to adorn the top and she fitted each napkin and handkerchief together like a vintage puzzle.

Now each time I glimpse at the shower curtain I wonder about the people who hand-stitched and tatted this piece or that. I imagine the dinner parties where the napkins stood in for the pot roast before it was served, somewhere between the martinis and brandy. Scraps of a chenille bedspread that kept a family warm in their drafty country home captivate me. I wonder if the  lace may have been meant for a fancy dress and why it wasn’t made.

It’s these bits of imagined history sewn together with love in the present that take me to that enchanted place.