Spring Is Peeking Through
Spring is peeking through. Daffodils are blooming in the yard and a primeval green is edging the deep burnt umber of the woods where I run with my dogs along the Pearl River. A day ago I was in Boston about to catch a plane back here (in time to miss their latest Nor'easter). I had spent most of a week in rural Massachusetts, running along country roads, surrounded by an endless network of low stone walls, from fields cleared by backbreaking labor to eke a living out of the land centuries ago. Snow was melting everywhere and there was a lovely flowing of tiny waterfalls everywhere.
I went there to be of help to one of my dearest friends, while her mother's battling cancer. Through this I got to know her mother, and in her found the gift of one of the most delightful people I've ever known. One of those people I find myself wanting to sit next to because she feels like comfort, to talk to because she is brilliant thoughtful conversation, to challenge because her wit is in turns sharp and gentle but always smart, and right. When I met Jenny twenty years ago, while she was unlike anyone I'd ever met (and still is), she felt like an old friend. With her mother, that feeling of home is there again. Does this make any sense?
I tried painting while up North, watercolor. But one of my challenges in an unfamiliar landscape is that it often doesn't feel true to paint a place until I've spent more time with it. Another is just the medium of watercolor. My brain feels like it has to walk backwards when I use watercolor. Maybe running backwards, and down a winding path, is a better fit. With oil and acrylic I find myself starting with chaos and carving out the order and translating the narrative as images present themselves out of the darkness. Watercolor it seems requires that you already know the story. I almost never already know the story. Maybe if I practiced watercolor more it might help my general life skills? Maybe I'd find myself less constantly bewildered, and not have to keep finding it's nearly the same story over and over?
With Sender it's certainly not the same story over and over. Wow, are we changing every day! This may have been the best Christmas we ever have, with no expectations on his part and complete delight and joy at every line of holiday lights, gatherings with songs, and oh my goodness, getting to open presents one morning! He loved the extra time with Gahny (Granny Patsy), RaRa (Uncle Robert), Bee (Aunt Betsy), his cousins and so many friends the holidays allowed us. So fun.
Then just a month later we celebrated his second birthday. His western grandmother and aunt, Denise's mother and sister, flew in from Oregon and California and we celebrated all week, with school party, family party, and friend party! "My Birthday," with the empasis on MY, was the refrain.
Yesterday after church (where he ate ALL of my breakfast plate up) Alexander helped me plant paperwhites a neighbor had dug up and given us, helped us dump the compost, carried tools to Denise while she and our friend Melissa fixed our fence. Then he and I blew bubbles and danced around the driveway with a cast iron plant frond in each hand, singing alternately "jingle bells," for some reason a new favorite of his (though it sounds like "Ginga baw! Ginga baw! Ginga awe day!"), and "Hey Sanna, Hosanna, sanna sanna ho" (or whatever it's called) from Jesus Christ Super Star. And life was good
This Friday is the Attic Gallery's annual theme show. Weather! Is the theme and it looks like a great group. I took my work over today. Hope to see you all there!
